Over the 4th of July holiday I found myself in the SW PA area visiting my wife's family. They live along a Norfolk Southern line, running alongside the Monongahela River. It just so happened that this visit coincided with the start of a major track maintenance program along this line. There wasn't much going on during the holiday, but all this equipment was lined up, poised to spring into action when the work week resumed. I am always fascinated by this stuff, so I took the opportunity to walk up and down this siding and take a few pictures. There were all sorts of specialized pieces of equipment, as well as NS boxcars, and a number of housing units (they looked like mobile homes on flat cars) for rail workers. The whole lineup must've stretched close to a 1/4 mile.
This fish eye look gives you a sense for how much stuff there was...and this view doesn't even include the majority of the MOW equipment, that was off in the distance to the right.
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I counted 25 of these "mobile barracks." Note the satellite dish and the air conditioning!
Here's a bunch of the individual track maintenance pieces. I wished I could've seen these in action but work did not begin until the day after we left for home!
