Spring seems to be coming early to northern Virginia, regardless of what one of my former home state's most famous residents has said. The main body of deciduous trees are a long way from the greenery shown here on Norfolk Southern's Pittsburgh Line this past summer, but it will not be long now, with the magnolias at work and near my apartment already blooming, and the Park Service predicting peak cherry blossom bloom (i.e. DC tourist season) in just a few weeks.
On this particular day last summer, I was between summer travels, and attended a baseball tournament with my family. I watched one of the later games, but spent some time on the nearby Norfolk Southern mainline for the first time since May 2021. The action was what constitutes a normal day on NS these days, with most GE widenose units, but there was some variety in the form of manifests and a BNSF ES44 in the older H2 paint (about a hundred units received this paint before BNSF transitioned to the "Heritage 4" paint one sees on most everything else.
