Rail-fanning on The OGR Forum 🚂 Welcome: Pictures YOU have taken! • Hope to see you out rail-fanning.

Took a few today driving through Kansas.

CORP 4075, SD40T-2 southwest of Norton KS

KYLE 2128 GP38-3 southwest of Norton KS

UTAH 5003 MK50-3 Phillipsburg Ks

Earlier this week, I spent an early evening trackside near Tenino, WA:

And I caught the Amtrak Operation Lifesaver unit a couple days later a few hundred yards south of the other shots.

Here is a few shots from the Illinois Railway Museum. I took a few rides one in the CTA units then in some old cars being pulled by an SD24 and trolly.

@Dave Ripp.- that museum has quite a varied collection. I like the old bucket crane that they use for coaling the steamer.

Bob

@RSJB18 posted:

@Dave Ripp.- that museum has quite a varied collection. I like the old bucket crane that they use for coaling the steamer.

Bob

That's actually what caught my eye, Bob. They were loading the Frisco 1630 for use the next day. There is so much equipment there I could have taken a thousand pictures. If you can't get there to see in person, they show a lot on their web site, Facebook and YouTube.

A few recent ones -

@p51 posted:

Earlier this week, I spend and early evening trackside near Tenino, WA:

And I caught the Amtrak Operation Lifesaver unit a couple days later a few hundred yards south of the other shots.

Thanks for posting this.  I just saw the Atlas O version of this engine at Sommerfelds Trains in Butler, WI and thought, I'd love to see the real version!  The model is stunning.  The photo of the real one looks pretty cool, too.

Mike

@Dave Ripp. Where did they find that Bessemer combine???  The former Bessemer & Lake Erie RR (now CN) mainline is right at the bottom of the long hill from my house!  Did you pick up any information on it?  No matter, I can look it up on the  Illinois Railway Museum website.

All excellent photographs everyone!

A “oopsy” from the rail complex in the former Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point, MD plant.  Guess they need to put down some torpedos for this engineer !

@trestleking posted:

A “oopsy” from the rail complex in the former Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point, MD plant.  Guess they need to put down some torpedo's for this engineer!

Wow, someone not paying attention.

Michigan Central Station, Detroit Michigan

August 19, 2023 - Let’s go to downtown Detroit and walk around on a warm summer evening. We will start at Roosevelt Park and walk up towards the Michigan Central Station. There was a wedding in front of the station. Ford Motor Company is restoring Michigan Central Station to be the centerpiece of this district. Where mobility innovators from around the world will develop, test, and launch new urban transportation solutions. This will also be Detroit’s Amtrak Station.

If you are going to be in Detroit: Wed. Sep 13, 2023 – Sun, Sep 24, 2023 • You may want to check out the Detroit Auto Show to check out all the new vehicles for 2024. (Click here for details)

Train Room Gary & Train Room Pam; walking fast to get that special rail-fanning photo. Yes: old people still hold hands!

Thanks for taking a look. Hope to see you out rail-fanning: Gary from Michigan 🚂

Christopher nice to see you posting.  Wow you must be a travelling man, photos of the NYC subway to UP and BNSF!  Do you still have your layout?  I haven't seen you post pictures of it latley and it looked like you were selling quite a few items a while back.

@trainroomgary posted:

Michigan Central Station, Detroit Michigan

August 19, 2023 - Let’s go to downtown Detroit and walk around on a warm summer evening. We will start at Roosevelt Park and walk up towards the Michigan Central Station. There was a wedding in front of the station. Ford Motor Company is restoring Michigan Central Station to be the centerpiece of this district. Where mobility innovators from around the world will develop, test, and launch new urban transportation solutions. This will also be Detroit’s Amtrak Station.

Train Room Gary & Train Room Pam; walking fast to get that special rail-fanning photo. Yes: old people still hold hands!

Thanks for taking a look. Hope to see you out rail-fanning: Gary from Michigan 🚂

You guys make a cute couple Gary....

Nice to see the old station building getting a new life. Much better than what happened to NY's original Penn Station.

Bob

Right before I moved to DC, I went after another Pittsburgh-area shortline I recently learned about. The Aliquippa & Ohio operates on what used to be the Aliquippa and Southern, which served the Jones & Laughlin, later LTV, Aliquippa Works mill. Jerry Joe Jacobson added the line to his Ohio Central portfolio as part of the Pittsburgh & Ohio Central. Like the POHC, the AORR was transferred to Genesse & Wyoming in 2008. The line is still operated by POHC crews, using a POHC SW1500. Most of the line's traffic is generated by a Lehigh Cement transload located on part of the old mill footprint, though the line serves a scrapyard and a few other customers. This is one of the few regular shortline jobs  that runs on a weekend, with the other being the Allegheny Valley Railroad's AVR-5 (and probably some Union railroad shifters).

I'm not sure if this totally qualifies as rail-fanning, but while I was at Lehigh University, PA I was having a polite conversation with Asa Packer in front of the University Administration building. Okay, it was rather a one sided conversation, I'm not crazy!! Asa Packer had quite the history being one of the founders of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, originally called Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad. He also founded Lehigh University donating 57 acres of land on South Mountain in Bethlehem, and $500k! Packer started out as a carpenter building canal boats to haul anthracite coal along the Lehigh river and tributaries and became quite wealthy and influential.

Here's a link to Lehigh University website if you want to know more.

https://www1.lehigh.edu/about/history/asapacker

So just a mile from the University are the Norfolk Southern tracks (formerly Lehigh Valley Railroad) that follow along Lehigh river and pass by the Steel Stacks of what's left of Bethlehem Steel. I wanted to get a photo of a NS freight cruising by the Stacks, but lack or time and private property got in the way! Here's a photo I took of the Steel Stacks, or rather Rusty Stacks!!! It was an absolutely beautiful day in Bethlehem! At one time coke, coal and iron was delivered from around the state of Pennsylvania to Bethlehem steel via Lehigh Valley Railroad that essentially replaced the canal boats. Bethlehem Steel ceased operations in 1996 due to competition and financial issues.

Hurry up and wait. CSX crew waiting for a signal to head west coming out of the intermodal yard.

Went to a Holy Cross football game on Saturday afternoon in Worcester and followed up by going atop the parking garage across from Union Station in downtown Worcester. Hung out for an hour as the sun was going down to watch Amtrak come through heading east and a CSX freight going west. Interesting perspective from the garage although the line of site in either direction is blocked by either trees or an office building, so you really only see what is right in front of you. Still, a ton of entertainment value as we carried on a conversation with a conductor from 5 floors up and listened to tons of chatter on a handheld scanner coming from Amtrak, MBTA, CSX and P&W.

@Mooner Your description sounds great, but I’m not seeing the video.  It only says “image not found”

@Mark Boyce posted:

@Mooner Your description sounds great, but I’m not seeing the video.  It only says “image not found”

No video posted - just photo.

@Mooner posted:

No video posted - just photo.

Oh, my oversight!  Now I see the photographs! Thank you.  Great perspective we don’t normally see!  

@Dave Ripp. posted:

Here is a few shots from the Illinois Railway Museum. I took a few rides one in the CTA units then in some old cars being pulled by an SD24 and trolly.

Still feels weird seeing AEM7’s in museums!

I watched the Cascades performing a high speed crossover at Tenino this evening.

Passing through DC last week and saw an interesting set of Amtrak cars a couple of tracks over. From south to north: Heritage sleeper Pacific Bend 10020, Amfleet Inspection Car 10001, Beech Grove the only open platform Amfleet car and American View an Viewliner sleeper. Assume its for housing a track inspection party. Not sure what the Amfleet inspection car has inside.

Don’t you hate it when after waiting for a train to show up, your camera battery croaks! By the time I got back to car and grabbed my phone, this was all I could get.

Cedarwood Co.

We rode the Pikes Peak Cog Railway in late August.  We previously rode the "old train" in 2016.  Hopefully I've loaded these pictures correctly.

It was partly sunny with decent visibility when we arrived at the peak.  Not more than 30 mintes later it was hailing at the peak and all were scrambling to get back inside the train.

BZ, great photographs!  That must have been a great trip and view, if the hail clouds didn’t obscure the view.

On my return trip from vacation, got a few pictures.

Caught this Boeing fuselage train just east of Pueblo CO.

Caught a Kyle train about to start moving SW of Norton KS.

Final train related stop for this trip was this former ATSF depot from Courtland KS that has been moved up to HWY 36 north  of Courtland and is now a Farmer's Market. Great produce and wonderful donuts! Pictures on the counters of the depot when in use and as it was being moved. Great place, we will start making it a regular stop!

I thought this would be an appropriate subject to post on the anniversary of September 11th. PATH car number 745 was in a consist of equipment which had been left under the World Trade Center when the buildings collapsed. During the subsequent cleanup, the car was extracted from the rubble and acquired by the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, CT where it occupies a spot of honor in observance of what happened that day. I took the photo during a visit to the museum in 2017. It’s a simple image which I hope provides the proper spirit within the context of our principal subject matter.

Bob

Bob, thank you for posting the photograph of the 745 and the story behind it.  That’s a great tribute I hadn’t heard before.

It took me quite a bit to go film a certain steam locomotive, but I don't care, it was fun. The last time I visited the Western Maryland Scenic, I was 8, my family rode behind 734 for a birthday celebration. Almost 15 years later, I returned, this time to chase the train instead of ride, and with a much larger locomotive in charge. I probably could have been more aggressive in my spots between Helmstetters/Brush Run and Frostburg, but for a first time with no guidance, I did OK. I also got to meet some great railfans (since a lot of the others were probably chasing 2102), including @DavidUy , who took far more videos than I did.

(0:00) Intro

Westbound Run: "Western Maryland" (C&O) H6 2-6-6-2 1309 | "Frostburg Flyer"

(0:15) 1309 moving around Ridgeley shops

(2:49) Departing for Cumberland Depot

(4:54) Crossing the Potomac River

(7:12) Departing Cumberland

(9:53) Narrows pacing

(10:10) Brush Run Tunnel

(12:47) Arriving Frostburg, With a little wheelslip

Eastbound Run: LTEX F40PH-2M 450

(14:59) Helmstetter's curve

(17:44) Arriving Cumberland

(19:59) Returning to Ridgeley

(23:18) Long photo reel

Very nice video, Dan!  That’s quite an engine to film.

The day after we rode the Pikes Peal RR we visited the Colorado RR Museum in Golden.

The afternoon after visiting the Colorado RR Museum we rode the Georgetown Loop Railroad.

Starting Point

End Point.  After reaching this end of the line, the locomotive goes around to the front and pulls the train back to Devil's Gate Station.

Iconic Bridge

Train goes over and under

Normally the train is steam powered.  However, the conductor told us we did not have a big enough crowd to justify steam the day we rode-  running the steam locomotive is a lot more expensive so they ran a diesel.

Love the Pink Cadillac.

Bruce would probably love it also.

I wanted to wait to post photos of the Mark Twain Zephyr until there had been an official announcement that the train was back on trucks.  The work was completed on 9/11/2023.  I was there to watch the process.  I will post the photo that I had here earlier and more later when I have done some editing.

Northwoods Flyer

@Mark Boyce posted:

Bob, thank you for posting the photograph of the 745 and the story behind it.  That’s a great tribute I hadn’t heard before.

Yeah, that's new to me as well. I had no clue one of these had been saved (I do remember reading about the train stuck under that station) and I love that it's still around today. It'd be like having an Oahu Railroad coach that had been shot up by a Japanese Zero on 12-7-41 (had such a thing actually happened) on display in Hawaii today.

I was at the historic Santa Clara, CA (Silicon Valley) Train Station this morning and caught a F40PH-2C Caltrain #922 pushing the northbound train towards San Francisco. A little bit of the old with the newer, the F40PH parked next to a Heavy weight Pullman Observation Car under restoration is an interesting contrast. And yes, the pictures show crisp blue skies and it will be a high of 80 degrees today, low humidity too! Perfect!!!

With a free Friday, I headed up to Pittsburgh and took another crack at AVR-3. This was my most exhaustive chase of an AVR-3 yet, going from Glenwood all the way to Eighty Four and return. AVR obliged with a mildly interesting consist; the crew dropped stone for the Wheeling & Lake Erie, picked up 6004 and some tanks at Bruceton, and the SWP HD40-2 set led the train. The downside: I was using a brand-new external microphone which was pretty bad, and which I didn't set up properly. In short, I got some great photos and some angles I'd never done before (Tunnel 19 and the top of Bruceton, for example), but  ultimately the best shots had crappy audio.

Consist: SWP HD40-2 406/4006, AVR GP40-3s 4002 and 4001

(0:00) Intro

(0:10) Picking up GATX stone for Wheeling at Glenwood

(2:40) Departing Glenwood Yard

(3:33) North end of Bruceton siding

(6:44) South end of Bruceton (W&LE interchange)

(8:03) Switching International Paper

(9:55) Departing for Performance Plastics (note the middle power)

(10:35) Arriving Performance Plastics

(13:12) Heading north, Eighty Four Lumber campus

(14:02) Tunnel 19, Venetia I love high-contrast scenes....not. Note the sand hoppers picked up at Wylandville.

(15:11) Arriving Bruceton for W&LE pickup

(16:13) Top level of Bruceton

(18:07) Departing Bruceton

(20:22) Streets Run Music section

(23:35) Ganges Way

(25:47) McClelland Rd., Venetia

(26:33) Thomas Eighty Four Road

(27:25) Photos

Nice video, Dan!

Michigan Central Station, Creating Images with Adobe Photoshop

August 19, 2023 - This is one photo of the Michigan Central Station that has be manipulated using Adobe Photoshop.

The original photo as seen by the human eye.

Black & White Photo

B&W Colorized with a 1920’s look.

Diffused color filter to yellow.

Comic color with an ink pen.

Comic color with a cyan filter with black ink.

Thanks for taking a look. Hope to see you out rail-fanning: Gary from Michigan 🚂

Took these yesterday on Napavine Hill: