Greetings! The Middle of the week is here once more. To add to last week's thread where I went with RailCamp to the Strasburg Rail Road, This week, I am visiting the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. 24 teenage boys this year spent a week together doing all things train-wise. On this day, they learned about history, preservation and about how these pieces can lead to a career or a hobby.
New at the Museum is this open gathering spot. It had been an HO train layout of Pennsylvania Railroad operations.
A tour of the restoration facilities at the museum shows it is crowded as always. The Lehigh Valley Railroad's crossing shanty from Wilkes-Barre is coming along in its restoration.
This is perhaps the oldest steel car in the museum, which is getting touch up work. It is in pretty good condition.
As locomotives are being prepared for paint and other stabilization, parts are taken off and stored. They will return. We see the sand dome of the M1B 4-8-2 on the right side of this photo.
Some unique pieces in the collection. This E60 is the only one I know of that is preserved. And this museum might be the only place preserving Amtrak equipment.
Another outbuilding is storing the 0-6-0 while some work is going on. This is in a corner of the yard by the turntable.
The K4s steamer 3750. This will go for a paint job in the restoration shop one day. It will be stored in the roundhouse once it is built.
It was Reading Days at the museum, so much of the floor space was occupied by some vendors and this large modular railroad depicting parts of the Reading Lines.
A cool new interactive game is now in the museum. "Col" is shoveled into a play firebox. Can you clear out your tender?
The boys like to pose for each other, Not so much for me. We had access to the cab of the E7 diesel for cab photos. I took pictures mainly outside the loco.
That is my start of the week. I hope you have a few photos to share from rail trips or just standing trackside. Talk to you later.
That cylindrical hopper looks about done.
It was the only place I could find that would have me off the track a ways and give me some altitude for a clear shot. I think it worked OK. I got in line on US 30 and bypassed the train's stop in Columbus and went to a corn field I had noted the week before a bit west of Schulyer. It was planted late and the corn was only knee high. I carefully walked out into it and set up again with my Nikon D850 & Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR on a tripod and waited. It was hot under the Nebraska sun and corn fields are always extra humid. Train eventually came (can see the smoke from miles away,) and I popped a couple of shots. I was the only human in that square mile. Once again my scouting trip had paid off.
I wanted some shots of the crowd with the train so I went on in to Fremont. I took only my Chamonix 4x5 and about six film holders loaded with Ilford FP4+ (ISO 125). I actually like these images the best. The people give a sense of scale and even my D850 can't match the clarity of a good 4x5 negative. B&W film gives a very classic look you just don't get from digital. The crowd was surprisingly small. I've seen bigger at Fremont for the UP 3985. I do like the way most people are raising their arms in the air holding their cell phones. It almost looks like some sort of weird ritual!
