Holidays are Coming. We are in the first full day of Hannukah today, and Christmas and New Year's Day loom close behind. If you have a good photo server or storage in your computer, start looking for some of your best photos of 2014. The Year-End wrap up of Midweek Photos begins on New Year's Eve, December 31.
In the meantime, here are a few pics of mine from the last few days. With the last 10 days in my area under a thick cloud of gloom, and rain or snow falling nearly every day, it was not a terrific time to sit trackside to catch a photo of trains. I hope you had some better atmosphere to work with.
Yesterday took me to the town of Hallstead, PA, near the New York State border. I took a few pics of the 1903-04 station built by the Delaware Lackawanna & Western RR. This was the west end of the Pennsylvania cutoff. The columns on the right of the building are a newer addition from a late 1980s restoration of the depot.
The original town-side of the station. Additions trackside take away a lot of the charm on the opposite end.
The concrete viaduct spanning the road. No trains passed through town while I was there. The rail line is currently Canadian Pacific, and in the process of being taken over by Norfolk Southern. Most trains run at night.
Taking a roundabout route back to Scranton, I followed the long-gone Jefferson Railroad, which was last used by the Delaware & Hudson RR. The only station building left on the route where tracks were pulled up is in Thompson, PA. It is a closed ice cream shop in December.
Now it is your time to take over the thread. If you have any pictures of the real world of railroading, please share with the rest of us here. Enjoy!
Add to this there were no RCPE trains I could get to within a reasonable amount of time and I suddenly came to think that my my old stand by, the BNSF Marshall sub, had a lot going for it! The radio suggested there were plenty of trains running, so back I went to my favorite local haunts. I managed to catch a few, starting with the Sioux Falls local as it turned south at the wye in Garrettson SD. The first two engines are GP30 units, each in different paint. I later caught the train at the Manley MN hump bridge, a location I've been returning to over and over throughout my foaming career. Enlarging the photo I saw "GP39s" on the frame instead of GP30. Huh? I did a little reading and learned that at one point BNSF upgraded their GP30 & GP35s and relabeled them as GP39S. Note the cab window was open and the engineer is wearing only a t-shirt (and probably pants too but I couldn't see those.) Yes, it was quite warm for South Dakota in December--about 50 degrees. The radio suggested a n/b grain train was coming up from Iowa, a few miles down the track. Moving from the hump bridge to another spot about a mile east produced my final shot. I really like this one. I plan on trying it at night with a bunch of big flash. The distance here is pretty deceptive as it is big. Shot with my D800E and Nikon 80-400mm AFS lens at 400mm.
A concrete pad on the Montour trail near Rt. 19 embedded with light rail. The pad is perpendicular to the trail. A speeder setout?
