Well over the last year I seem to have been retracing a lot of Civil War history first with my visit to tidewater Virginia last July and just this March with a visit to the Shenandoah Valley. The former was one of those "free" time share weekends and one of the inducements was a free 3 night stay in the Shenandoah National Park area which made the ( Read more... )

Well after my success of my 2009 C&O Main Line survey I was eager to get a second bite at the apple since I had only learned the trick to cleaning the rear Viewliner window from inside the train just as we were approaching the Southern main line at Orange, VA. Trying to get good views out the back of an Amtrak train is always a crap shoot as there ( Read more... )

Part 2 will cover Hinton, WV to Washington, DC with a few gaps along the way. These photos were taken from the rear of Amtrak's eastbound Cardinal (Train 50) and you can view the entire set at http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/09-07-26_CnO_SURVEY_09/-Thumbnails.html In the Huntington East ETT refer to the North Mountain and Washington ( Read more... )

The last installment of my four part epic Railfan trip to Chicago in 2009 will cover my sleeping car trip on Amtrak's Cardinal in July of 2009. Due to CSX's retarded decision to start axing down the perfectly serviceable C&O era signals on the famous C&O Main Line through Kentucky and West Virginia I considered this part of the trip to be the real ( Read more... )