Enola Yard near Harrisburg, PA- Railfanning opportunity?

@hokie71 posted:

I may be in the Harrisburg area for a few days soon and hope to have time to do some railfanning.  It looks like Rt. 15 parallels the enola yard, are there good spots to see what is going on?  Other suggestions for railfanning in this area welcome too. Thanks in advance.

 

I did an internet search and found that there is a bridge called the Overview Bridge on Bella Vista Drive that has 20 large camera ports in the chain link fence on the bridge. There are no sidewalks per se, but wide shoulders accommodate pedestrians to view the comings and goings on the north section of Enola Yard. Hat tip to the "Gregarious Railfan." 

Pat

There are a few spots along RT 15 that offer a good view.  When I have been there, I parked on the west side and CAREFULLY crossed the roadway to take some shots.  No trespassing in the yard of course.  There is also a good spot where Belle Vista Drive crosses the tracks.

But I wouldn’t limit it to Enola yard.  Try to get a room at the Bridgeview B&B.  Wake up in the morning and take some shots of the Rockville Bridge.  Check out Harris Tower.  See the Statue of Liberty.

Thanks, Super pics and ideas.  The gregarious railfan site is amazing and what a shame he is shutting down at the end of the year due to web security costs. Definitely will hit Strasburg and the museum appears to be open.

(Not to get off the track  but I wonder how sites like that can be saved?)

Also, if you go north along rte 15 I think, it is not too far to Duncannon.    The station there is restored as a business and you can acess the tracks from the platform to take some photos and use the statin as a photo prop.    It is a good place to get the freights moving fast along the river.

I can also reccommend the Bridgeview B&B.   I have stayed there a few times and it is a great location to watch trains on the Rockville bridge.     If you don't stay there, it is not polite to go onto his property or deck to watch trains.     However, if you continue north a few 100 yards along that road, you get to the north side of the Rockville bridge where there is a large pull off area that has open veiws of the bridge.   You are a little lower than at the B&B but can still see the trains going across the bridge quite well.

Good place to eat and watch the trains go over the Rockville bridge is The Boro cafe.  It is located on the south side of the bridge on Front Street just south of Fort Hunter.  Good wings, burgers and beers.  They have an outside area that you watch the trains come and go over the bridge.  One of our favorite places to relax eat and watch trains.  Take your binoculars.

A few shots from Marysville (including the north side of the bridge and the subway).  Also Duncannon.

Here is the BOROs website.

https://borobar.com

@hokie71 posted:

Definitely will hit Strasburg and the museum appears to be open.

Make sure you purchase your ticket ahead of time for the Strasburg RR.

One point regarding Enola; NS shut down the hump last Friday and Enola will only see block swapping going forward.  Concurrent with this closure of the hump, NS changed a number of symbols as well as origin and destination points.  It’s likely many of these trains will simply continue up the east shore of the Susquehanna or turn east from Harrisburg - completely missing Enola.

Curt

Curt,

Ouch on that NS change. Here is the downloadable pdf from the gregarious railfan- of the check marks on the map (good viewing) will this make any of these better or worse?

Anything next to the yard or that area in Lehigh’s second photo above may be slower in terms of activity.  

I’ve pasted in a link to Train Orders where the closure of the Enola hump was discussed.  One of the guys listed the trains that have been discontinued as well as those that will still enter Enola Yard. Unless you subscribe to Train Orders, you won’t be able to access page two of the discussion but, all the train changes are on page one anyhow.

https://www.trainorders.com/di...n/read.php?2,5108438

Several earlier posters have mentioned the area near Rockville Bridge as well as a few west of there toward Cove and Duncannon.  You really can’t go wrong at those spots as there are still something like 50-55 trains a day passing through that area.

Curt

• @hokie71 posted:

Thanks, Super pics and ideas.  The gregarious railfan site is amazing and what a shame he is shutting down at the end of the year due to web security costs. Definitely will hit Strasburg and the museum appears to be open.

(Not to get off the track  but I wonder how sites like that can be saved?)

The Internet Archive and their Wayback Machine is one...

https://web.archive.org/web/20...egariousrailfan.com/

You can also save off individual pages to your computer using the “Save As” function in your web browser.

However, someone should tell him to look into “Let’s Encrypt” since they issue the TLS security certificates he’s talking about for free.  https://letsencrypt.org/

To hump or not to hump, however, NS continues to operate a whole lot of trains over Horseshore Curve currently.  The Virtural Railfan on site camera is really cool, but my heart aches everytime I see the poor Pennsy GP9 on display in the park, dirty, neglegted, poor baby has seen better days.  No way to represent The Standard Railroad of the World!

Joe

Looks worse in person.

We were up at the curve in August (even made VR’s Grab Bag) and I’ll agree!  If the museum folks don’t stabilize and repaint that engine soon, it’ll simply crumble away.

Curt

That diesel doesn't look as bad as the NYC Mohawk in Elkhart, Indiana.  John