Earlier in the week, NS placed an announcement on their website of a pending high / wide load that might delay NS's 211-27 (Croxton to Greensboro & Atlanta) by their estimate of four hours and thirty minutes to allow this train to pass. That announcement peaked my interest and curiosity as to what this load was. After all, to my knowledge, NS had never placed such a notice previously. Come Saturday morning, I arrived in Bloomsbury (NJ) around 10 AM to wait at one of my Lehigh Line haunts to see what this load was. Finally around 1PM my scanner came alive with the engineer calling signals by acknowledging "NS 052, MP 71". Another two miles and this unknown eastbound load would soon be known. At 1:20, the high / wide load turned out to be a Air Products heat exchanger. NS 9276 (C40-9W) and NS 7667 (ES40DC) provided the motive power. I photographed it at Bloomsbury (LEHL MP 68.8) ...
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... and then hustled off to Stanton Station where I was able to photograph it once again.
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By that time and after being out in the hot sun waiting for this train, that heat exchanger's appearance reminded me of an over-sized beer keg. A cold brew was something that would have tasted good right about then to quench my thirst and toast a successful day of being trackside.