Raining in Cresson

It’s a-rainin’. (Screenshot by BobbaLew.)

—As a railfan Yrs Trly views a streaming webcam in Cresson, PA.
It’s mounted on Station-Inn, a bed-and-breakfast for railfans. The camera looks out on the old Pennsy main through Cresson. The railroad is Pennsy’s west slope up Allegheny Mountain. The view is pictured above.
It’s not much to look at — not photogenic — but great fun to watch. I know what I’m watching, coal, crude-oil, the Slabber, the trash-train. And stackers galore. I’ve seen ‘em for real.
And left-to-right is uphill. Locomotives assault-the-heavens, and helper-locomotives are often needed.
The other side of the mountain is Altoona (PA), once the railroad’s locus of operations. Altoona was very much a railroad town. Much is gone, but massive Juniata shops nearby remains.
The railroad is now Norfolk Southern, but originally was the Pennsylvania Railroad, as laid out across PA about 1850. Pennsy lasted a long time, and became very powerful. That railroad became a main trading route with the east-coast megalopolis.
Railroads west of Pittsburgh were merged into Pennsy to feed its main stem. Pennsy went all the way to Chicago and St. Louis.
Pennsy merged with arch-rival New York Central in 1968, but that quickly went bankrupt. It had costly commuter operations, among other problems. Freight-shipping was moving to trucking, especially with the Interstate Highway System.
Trucking was more flexible, and railroading owned its right-of-way; highways are gumint built/maintained.
Penn-Central was succeeded by Conrail, instituted by gumint to save northeast railroading. Many northeast railroads were failing.
The old Pennsy across PA became Conrail, and Conrail eventually privatized. Conrail broke up and sold in 1999. The old Pennsy main across PA went to Norfolk Southern, and the old New York Central across NY state went to CSX Transportation.
Many old railroad branches were abandoned or sold to independent short-line operators. Short-line railroads don’t operate under the union-rules of the big railroads.
Many of the commuter operations became gumint entities.
I run that Cresson webcam most every day. I run it as background.
The railroad is still very active. My brother and I often visit the Altoona area to photograph trains — he’s a railfan too. Wait 20 minutes and you’ll see a train.
And Allegheny Mountain is thrilling. To get over it railroaders have to operate at “Run-Eight” climbing. That’s full fuel-delivery for a diesel locomotive, the equivalent of pedal-to-the-metal.
Descending is even more challenging. Brakes (on the cars) have to be used gingerly -a) to keep the train from running away downhill, and -b) to avoid breaking couplers, which breaks up the train.
I watch that webcam a lot. If I hear “rumba-rumba-rumba” I drop everything. “Sounds like O7T,” I shout. That’s Amtrak’s westbound Pennsylvanian. The Pennsylvanian is the only daily passenger train left on this storied railroad. There used to be hundreds. 04T is eastbound.
I pretty much know the train-numbers. Every time a train passes a signal, it’s engineer has to call out the signal-aspect and identify his train on railroad radio.
I take my scanner along so I hear that.
He’ll radio the signal location: “04T, east on Two” (Track Two), “242” (the milepost signal location; “CLEAR!” If I’m east of milepost 242, I’ll see the train.
I fired up the webcam the other day. Sun out here at home, but raining down there.
Cresson is about 250 miles south. Earlier that morning it was cloudy here at home, but the clouds went south. I could see a cloud-bank way farther south.
If I drove to Altoona, I’d drive into rain.

• “KRESS-in.”
• The “Slabber” is a unit extra of all open gondola cars loaded with two heavy steel slabs per car. The slabs are being transferred to a rolling-mill to be rolled into thin sheet-metal. A “slabber” is very heavy, and may need two helper-sets to get over the mountain. “Slabber” is a term my brother and I made up.
• The “trash-train” is another unit extra of all trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) flatcars loaded with containers filled with trash and garbage. It usually stinks.
• The west slope of Allegheny Mountain is not as steep as the east slope, but the railroad often uses helper-sets on it.