Midweek Photos 8/3/2016

This past Sunday, we took a train tour of Eastern Pennsylvania and one of our stops was the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad which runs tourist trains over a segment of the old Reading Company Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch.

Power for the day was a former US Army GE 45 ton center cab diesel built in 1942. Rolling stock consists of an interesting collection of equipment from various eastern roads including a DL&W "Boonton" coach along with several ex-Reading coaches and cabooses. A genuine treasure is a former Lehigh & New England composite gondola which has been fitted with benches for passengers. Riding this car was a real treat, hearkening back to the early days of excursions when many trips were operated with open gondolas included in their consists. 

Also on the property at Kempton is a former Ironton Railroad tool car. Originally built by Jackson and Sharp as a coach for the Atlantic City Railroad, the car now serves as home for an HO layout belonging to the Schuylkill and Lehigh Model Railroad Club. Spotted next to the club car on the same siding is a C&O insulated box car which has been modified with a boiler for passenger train heating in colder weather when steam power is not available. 

Enjoy!

Bob

Got my first DSLR this past week. Here are some shots that I've done while learning the camera. Enjoy!

A friend of mine sent me these photos of 3 new EMDX locomotives bound for Saudi Arabia.  They were seen at NS's Belleview Yard and heading toward Columbus, Ohio in Attica, Ohio.  Note the special screening to protect against sand.  Also note the Saudi markings being blocked out.

Swipesy posted:

A friend of mine sent me these photos of 3 new EMDX locomotives bound for Saudi Arabia.  There were seen at NS's Belleview Yard and heading toward Columbus, Ohio in Attica, Ohio.  Note the special screening to protect against sand.

That big box air intake system is much more that just "screening to protect agains sand". Those specially designed air filters have an "air plus/blast" system to discharge the super fine Arabian desert sand from inside the filters. Since the sand in that part of the world is not really "sand" as we know it, but more like Talcum Powder, and thus is VERY, VERY difficult to filter out of the intake air.

 Also not the Saudi markings being blocked out.

These tankers were dropped on a siding in Ashley recently. There are more in Wilkes-Barre too.

...the reds have it - Deshler, OH

You're off to a great start, PennsyPride.  I still have a camera, still take a photo now & then, but by the time Wednesday rolls around I forget what day it is!  Lots of distractions this time of year--kayaking on Lake Superior, the wheat harvest, summer festivals--it's a long list.  Anyway, a few shots.  This week's story is about wheat.  It was wheat that founded the economy for the railroads and allowed them to continue on west.  to fund the building of the transcontinental railroad(s),  Congress granted them hundreds of thousands of acres along the right of ways.  The railroads then sold this land to farmers, and made money from hauling the wheat as well.  The Dakota wheat mostly was shipped back to the big water powered mills along the Mississippi River in St. Paul, MN, although there were also some flour mills in the bigger towns in the Dakotas.  Northern Pacific Railroad hired Fargo photographer Jack Haynes to photo the Bonanza farms around Fargo and Grandin ND (Red River Valley,) to advertise the land to Easterners.  The Bonanza farms were huge--30,000+ acres.  They relied on mechanization and transient labor.  Ultimately they were cumbersome and unable to compete with the more nimble smaller farms ("small" being a relative term out here.)    Wheat isn't as popular in the Eastern Dakotas now (corn is,) but the wheat fields are still measured by the square mile here.  Some shots:

1. RCPE w/b train at the ghost town of Cottonwood SD.  Train is heading to Wall to drop off a few empty grain hoppers to load wheat, and then on to Rapid City.  All of the old wooden elevators like this one were built to store wheat.  Every town had at least one.

2.  Tulare SD.  A n/b BNSF local had a little boo-boo here.  The spilled grain is wheat.  The tankers were loaded with ethanol.  BNSF Aberdeen sub.

3.  Shawnee, KS (Kansas City)   The BNSF transcon runs right by a little league baseball complex.  Cool, eh?  Camera was a c.1983 Nikon F3T.

4.  Wolsey, SD  A three-pack of Geeps pull a 110 string of empty hoppers to South Dakota Wheat Growers elevator, on BNSF Aberdeen sub.

5.  Mellete, SD.  BNSF local (above train) passes by a John Deere combine cutting wheat.

6.  Groton, SD.  Two Case 8230 combines with 45 ft. heads (each worth $600K) cut wheat along the BNSF Appleton sub (former MILW transcon.)

Been a while since I've posted. Life gets busy sometimes. Any way, I got a chance to make some photos on a quiet

day some time ago, here are the results. This is a two locomotive set, parked for duty at the crew shack at Keyser WVa

CSX yard, made with a new-to-me Nikon 85mm 3.5 DX Micro lens. It seems to be very sharp, and is great fun.

My wife always uses our one car to get to work, I needed it this day so I drove her to work, and was able to stop

at Keyser in the morning and later in the late afternoon. And make some photos of 3063 and 951 resting.

The bees were working on the wildflowers by the crew shack. CSX Bees! And all photos with the 85 and my D7000.

Ed

Buy the way, I'm finding a very important tool for photography is a.....automobile!

Ed

Ed Mullan posted:

The bees were working on the wildflowers by the crew shack. CSX Bees! And all photos with the 85 and my D7000.

Ed

 

 

Ed--

That first bug is NOT a bee.  It's a fly!  You were fooled by an excellent example of mimicry.  Mimics in nature are a fun find, but you have to look close.  My favorite is the Viceroy butterfly.  It looks almost exactly like the Monarch butterfuly.  The Monarch is very bitter tasting to birds, but the Viceroy is edible.  So, they evolved to look like monarchs!  There are a number of flies that look like hymenoptera (stinging insects), but are harmless.

"Bee mimics are, simply put, other insects that resemble bees. This is called Batesian mimicry, which just means something harmless is imitating something dangerous."

https://beespotter.org/topics/mimics/,   http://bugguide.net/node/view/33289

Kent in SD

Thanks Kent for the kind words! Still learning, but always having fun with the new camera!

Looks Like the 1225 will be running excursion tours for 15 dollars a head August 20th from Historic Howell depot to Ann Arbor... I just marked the calendar.