This summer I had the opportunity to take a road trip to Pittsburgh and as usual I was able to convince my ride to throw in some railfan stops along the way. These consisted of a number of locations along the former PRR Main Line / Conrail Pittsburgh Line as well as some stops in downtown Pittsburgh. This was my first visit back to Pittsburgh ( Read more... )

Those of you who know me on Facebook are probably already aware of this, but mast March my father passed away from a long simmering condition. Over that month I was doing a good deal of driving to visit him in various hospitals and care centers. As a result I wound up with a number of random railfan photos that don't really come together into a ( Read more... )

About 2 years ago a friend of mine was able to take advantage of a rear vestibule ride on early morning Amtrak Regional Train 170 and provided me with a set of photos to process and upload. Well it took me a while, but I finally got them. The set covers the NEC from Philly to Boston and dates from March of 2013 so it's a bit of a step back in ( Read more... )

While the day before Thanksgiving 2014 brought cold wet and snow, the Sunday after brought sunshine, extra trains and NJT Arrow III trainsets venturing well south of Trenton. Previously I had looked to a field adjacent to the NEC at the end of Runway 10, but recently Airport police have started kicking people out of that area so I needed to find a ( Read more... )

It has been a long running tradition of mine to head out with Chuchubob for some NEC railfanning on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Typically there are some Amtrak extra trains running along with generally increased consists. Unfortunately this year an early winter storm created hazardous driving conditions so I hit upon the idea of taking ( Read more... )

When Amtrak announced it's 2014 Fall Foliage Trip to and from the Rockville Bridge via the Conrail Harrisburg Line I was on board immediately. However this year riders were presented with a choice of days (Saturday or Sunday) from the beginning. This year I decided to go with Sunday with a plan to drive up to Rockville on Saturday to photograph ( Read more... )

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... )

After a...one, year absence I returned with much fanfare to the premier holiday event in the New York City Area, that's right, the Holiday Nostalgia Train. By now everyone here should know the details. Train of R1/9's running between 2nd Ave and Queens Plaza on a (V) (M), yaddie yaddie yadda. What really surprised me after my absence was 1) how ( Read more... )

In 2013 Amtrak added something new to its fall foliage excursion offerings, which had previously consisted of attaching its remaining great dome car to various trains such as the Adirondack and Cardinal. Marshaling spare cars from across its system, Amtrak assembled an 18 or so car special excursion train to run a rare milage trip starting at ( Read more... )

The Port Road Shoo Flys were once considered the holy grail of railfan locations in the Eastern Pennsylvania area. These three structures were built by the pennsylvania Railroad as part of the 1915 Atglen and Susquehanna "Low Grade" project that bypassed heavy grades on the PRR Main Line between Parkesburg and Harrisburg by cutting across hill and ( Read more... )