Received the following 2 emails from our correspondent in NW Pennsylvania. First one is the original from Brian Plant which included the photos below. Photo captions are the photo labels from Brian's email.
If you didn't receive the first email
from a couple weeks ago, I was on vacation the last week of February and
traveled from New York to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, and even cut through part of West Virginia on the way back home. Tom
Mik from Connecticut was my travel partner and we met up with good friends Pete
Ruesch, Chris Thompson and Barry Lennon in Indiana. We also received tour guide
support in person from John Means on the South Shore and Mark Mautner in the St.
Louis metro area, as well as tactical intel from Terry Chicwak, John Leopard,
Todd Novak, Scott Snell and many others along the way.
The following images are from the first
day of the trip when we followed the classy Reading & Northern GP39RN
models, former Santa Fe GP30 REBUILDS painted to match the Reading Company's
final paint scheme for freight diesels, from Tamaqua to Mount Carmel and back as
far as Ashland. It's hard to imagine just how much Anthracite coal traffic used
to be shipped by rail before the 1950s, when the oil industry took a
stranglehold on the home heating business. The R&N has done a wonderful job
rebuilding the Anthracite traffic since taking over the former Reading lines
from Conrail in 1991.
Brian Plant
Wonderful, Brian!
I love the accentuated,
snow-covered grades, as seen through your telephoto. Long-lens operations views
can really highlight the roller-coaster profiles that railroaders and their
locomotives have to overcome in their routine execution of their daily duties
while conducting interstate commerce...even (especially!) on customer
sidetracks. There is no doubt as to the wisdom of having derail
protection, in
particular, on that one track with the yellow derail reminder!
It
might seem for most of the year to be almost overkill to 'remind'
conductors of the presence of a derail, but beneath that substantial blanket of
snow, these brightly-colored safety devices can 'look' just like all of their
surroundings. The distractions and difficulties of switching in snow (especially
if at night, accompanied by heavy snowfall or frigid, drift-forming winds) could
allow the momentary lapse of focus that could get a crew just a few feet beyond
a buried derail's actual vs. perceived location, with a unit's wheel-set or
truck on the ground or a derail plowed off the rail.
R&N's #2532's
retained class lights, which appear to be illuminated 'white' in one scene, are a
nice retro touch. I understand why the FRA has allowed their removal and the
discontinuance of their inclusion on new-builds, but to my vintage eyes, motive
power noses -- especially on units that once had class lights -- simply
look 'naked' without them. It is so nice to see a pair of clean units with the
classic and classy, half-century+ old EMD GP30 profile still generating revenue
ton miles, as we approach the end of the first quarter of
2015!
Thank you for sharing this nice photo set (typical of your
work!), Brian.
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| 2532 locust summit cloudy |
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| 2532 locust summit 320mm |
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| 2532 snowy detail |
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| 2532 gordon last |
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| 2531 east of gordon close |
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| 2531 east of gordon |
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| 2531 silhobw |
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| 2531 locust descent |
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| 2531 locust summit wide |
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2531 locust summit yard
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| 2531 p activ steep grade |
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| 2531 p activ start down |
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| 2531 p activ spot |
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| 2531 red light p activ |
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| 2531 snowy ip spot |
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| 2531 spotting gordon |