A funny looking forest

One of the busiest rail lines around is the route between Mojave and Bakersfield, California that passes through the town of Tehachapi. It is a mountain railroad, crossing the southern end of the Sierra range, with plenty of tunnels, curves, and the famous loop where the track crosses over itself in a loop to obtain elevation. This mostly single track line hosts trains from both the UP and BNSF, and is the major rail link between northern and southern California.

Despite the fact that this is a mountain railroad, there aren't many trees to be seen. The east end has Joshua trees, the west some oaks. For the most part the terrain is bare. That makes these wind turbines that cover the hillsides stand out even more. This is a high wind area, which makes it ideal for wind power generation. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of turbines covering the ridges along the east end of the line. I like them, think they add scenic interest.

View on a bridge

This is the kind of shot the guys from yesterday were going for. The northbound Coast Starlight, running about 4 hours late, crossing the Salt Creek trestle. I'm sure anyone looking out the windows would have wondered about the crazy guys standing in the cold and snow. My own experience was that it is nice to be inside the train, cozy, warm, and dry.

On one of my cross country train trips from LA to New York I  followed a cold front across the country. The weather was quite nice at Albuquerque, but by the time we reached northern New Mexico the temperature had fallen precipitously. It got so cold so fast that the tracks broke apart in several places from the temperature change, delaying my train. By Chicago the next day it was downright frigid.   The train was an hour late getting out of the windy city, and by the time it reached Buffalo the next morning was 7 hours down. Buffalo was in the middle of one of their lake effect blizzards, and visibility was non existent. I could see just far enough off the train to see the streets empty of traffic, nothing moving. Amtrak was the only thing going. I was very glad to be in a nice warm sleeper!

Waiting for a train

In honor(?) of our first major winter storm of the season, here are some intrepid railfans braving the elements in their quest for the white. We're at the bottom of the Salt Creek trestle, east of Oakridge. IIRC, the day was cold and blustery, with the snow starting just above Oakridge. This was as far as we ventured, road conditions being bad above this point. From the left are Anthony Elkins, Dan Sheets, and Matt Robbins. I'm behind the camera.

Big steam in action!

I've previously blogged about the Southern (and Norfolk Southern) excursion program of the 1980s and early 90s. In 1991 my buddy and I took off on our annual summer railfan trip to the midwest. We timed it so that we would be seeing four steam excursion trains in the week we were on the road. That was pretty amazing!

The first day of our journey west we started in Buffalo, NY. The Norfolk Southern was running their big A class, the 1218, on an excursion to Albion, Pennsylvania and back. The 1218 was built in 1943 at the Norfolk & Western Railway's shop in Roanoke, Virginia. It was designed to haul coal from the mines of Appalachia to tidewater in Virginia. The railroad retired it from active service in 1959, but the NS rebuilt it for excursion service  in 1987, and used it to pull passengers throughout the system until 1992.

This video captures some of the excitement of big steam in operation. But to get the total effect, you really have to be trackside. Only there will you feel the ground shake, smell the burning coal, and get cinders in your face!

Artsy

In September 2007 the Operation Life Saver train paid a visit to Eugene. OLS is a cooperative effort between the railroads and law enforcement groups to publicize grade crossing safety. The UP supports OLS by running a set of their restored vintage passenger equipment around the entire system, giving rides to the public and garnering publicity for the cause.

I captured the train in the glinty light of morning, sitting at the Eugene station. The golden glow of the early sun gives the train a surreal look.

A more normal view of the train:

Fast trains

The US is way behind most other countries in high speed rail (among other things). There are many reasons for this, too many to get into here. The only "high speed" trains in the country are the Acela trainsets in the northeast corridor between Washington DC and Boston, and they max out at around 150 MPH. Almost every other passenger operation pokes along at a maximum speed of 79.

In the mid 1970s New York State was at the forefront of trying to upgrade rail service. The state invested in the rehabilitation of trackage for freight service statewide. They also upgraded sections of track on the New York City - Buffalo corridor to allow 110 MPH opearation. Since conventional locomotive hauled equipment wasn't capable of these speeds, the state purchased a number of gas turbine powered trainsets capable of the higher speed. They were based on a French design, but built in the US.

I liked these trains a lot. Whenever I had the chance to ride one, I did. They featured large windows, comfortable seats, and rode very smoothly on the rebuilt trackage. I even talked my way into a cab ride one time. That was a thrill. Watching out the front window as the speedometer read 110MPH was pretty exciting. It was even a little frightening at times, since the route had some at grade road crossings and you never knew if drivers were going to stay out of your way! By the 2000s the trains were showing their age, and the state spent millions to rebuild them. Unfortunately they never saw service, victims of political infighting between Amtrak and the state.

I captured this turbo near Rochester, NY in the autumn of 1981. Though it is only going 79, it whizzed by me pretty quickly.

Another turbine powered train was tried for high speed service. This was an American design, not as successful. After a very short career in the US in the late 1960s, the trainsets were sold to Canada, who kept them running into the mid-80s. My buddy and I rode them a couple of times and found out that they had so many problems a mechanic rode every trip. It was fun to ride, since they had a raised "dome" on each end where you could sit right behind the engineer. The were no walls between the cars, so on a curve you could watch the inside twist and turn. We called it the "worm train".

Colorful

Some of the more interesting trainsets to come through Eugene in recent years have been the Canadian grain trains. These unit trains were made up of long strings of covered jumbo hopper cars, filled with grain from the prairies of the Canadian west bound for California. They were a joint operation with the Canadian Pacific Railroad, who frequently provided their own locomotives. This made for a colorful consist, with CP red and leased blue units mixed in with UP yellow.

On one of our trips up the hill, we captured a set just outside of Westir, Oregon.

Typical jumbo hopper:

Wind River canyon

A long time ago, in a land far away, I lived in Wyoming. I resided in the Cowboy State a couple of times, interrupted by a short stint in Utah. The first time I was there, in 1975, I worked for a TV station as a transmitter engineer. This was rather an unusual job, since it required me to live at the site, on top of a mountain 25 miles up a dirt road from town. I didn't get into town very often, with the longest period being a six week stretch when the road was closed by snow and the weather too nasty to snowmobile down.

The mountaintop I lived on was situated at the edge of a 2000 foot cliff. At the bottom was the Wind River, which was the route of the Burlington Northern Railroad's line through the central part of the state. I could look out my window, and see their trains far, far, below. The lens I would have needed to photograph those trains from up there was far beyond the reach of mortal men.

I took this picture at a later date, sometime around 1990 when I went back for a visit.

Steam in the Poconos

One of the many rail lines that crisscrossed northeastern Pennsylvania to get from New York City to Buffalo was that of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, otherwise known as the DL&W or Lackawanna. It was a coal hauling line, and was so prosperous early in the 20th Century that it undertook a line relocation with fills, cuts, tunnels and massive concrete viaducts that I have previously blogged. The DL&W was one of the major players in that market, along with the New York Central and Pennsylvania. Unlike the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the DL&W (merged with the Erie in 1960) made money into the 1970s. A hurricane in 1972 which destroyed major parts of the line finally drove it into bankruptcy, and it became part of Conrail in 1976.

As with the Lehigh, large segments of trackage were made redundant by the Conrail merger. One of those  was the mainline from Scranton, Pennsylvania over the Pocono Mountains. This included the line's major maintenance facility in Scranton. The line and facility might have been scrapped like so much of the rest of the rail infrastructure in the northeast, were it not for Steamtown.

Steamtown was a small, privately run organization located in the wilds of Vermont, far from any major population centers. They had operable steam locomotives and rolling stock, and ran excursions. Thier location was against them, as it was so far out of the way that few people came to ride. By the middle 1980s they were looking for a new home, somewhere closer to the population centers of the Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Washington corridor. Scranton was in the right place, and had the extant rail facilities, including a mainline on which to run excursions.

By the early 1990s a combination of things happened that resulted in the National Park Service taking over the operation, and it became the Steamtown National Historic Site. An influx of money enabled the rebuilding of the historic roundhouse, and construction of a visitor center and interpretive center. NPS funded rebuilding the mainline up into the Poconos to Tobyhanna for excursion use.

In the winter of 1996, the Milwaukee Road #261 was leased by the park to power a series of fall and winter trips. The winter trips were highly unusual for a steam locomotive, and I eagerly looked forward to them. The trips were scheduled for late February, which normally means a LOT of snow on the ground in Pennsylvania. Watching the big steamer blast through snowdrifts would have been a real treat! Of course this year it decided to warm up, and by trip time there was little left on the ground. But then it turned cold. When the weekend of the trip arrived, it was bitter. My buddy and I both froze our cameras, not to mention ourselves, when we got off for the photo runbys.

It was worth it, to see big steam in the winter.

The 261 exiting nay Aug Tunnel, just out of Scranton.



Another shot from that trip:

Towanda

Towanda, Pennsylvania is another rustbelt town that has seen better days. Pre WWII, it used to have some heavy industry, and was the junction between the Lehigh Valley Railroad's heavy mainline and their secondary passenger line. The Lehigh was another of the many lines that ran between New York City and Buffalo. Their route was more southerly than the others, cutting through northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania before crossing upstate New York. It was the longest, so never could really compete with the likes of the New York Central or Erie. Still, as long as everything ran on coal, it was generally a moneymaker. As the switch to oil and electricity took place, the lines fortunes waned. It ultimately went bankrupt in the 1970s and was one of the lines that made up Conrail. In the rationalization of trackage that followed, most of the Lehigh's lines were removed from service.

One of the lines that did remain in service, though no longer as a through route, was the mainline through Towanda. In better days the Lehigh had built this massive double track bridge over the Susquehanna River at Towanda, to serve the heavy traffic that once flowed on all the rail lines of the northeast. By the time I took this shot about 1990, it was down to one train a day each direction, and that a local that only served the few industries left on line. The second track was long gone.

One of the remaining industries was a small agriculture business just outside of Towanda. It wasn't on the mainline, but on what was left of the secondary line. From a junction in downtown Towanda, it meandered a few miles south to Monroeton, and was run by a small line, the TMSL - the Towanda Monroeton Shippers Lifeline. The TMSL consisted of one guy who had a day job driving a bus, and one locomotive. He would come out on Saturdays or after work to move the occasional car. I chased the TMSL one day, if you can call what I did a chase. The train went so slow I was able to stay ahead of it by walking.

Train time at Springfield

Took this shot a couple of days ago. It is the Weyerhouser local at downtown Springfield. I'd gone down to capture the latest inspection special, and while waiting discovered this caboose sitting at the "station". I hadn't seen it there before, so was curious about why it was there.

A couple of days later I happened to be out and about, and came across the local heading up the branch towards Kingsford and the cement plant at the end of the branch. It had the caboose, which is highly unusual. It has run without one for years. I'll have to see if this was a one time deal or will become the regular mode of operation.

Another view of downtown Springfield:

Chitwood

There aren't many places in the country where a railroad and a covered ridge are in close proximity. Around here, we have three! The biggest and perhaps most scenic is in Westfir, where the UP Cascade Line crosses the Willamette River adjacent to the Office covered bridge. I've previously posted a video of Amtrak crossing that bridge. A second one is near Scio, where the Albany and Eastern runs alongside the Gilkey covered bridge. I haven't yet captured a train there. Finally there is the Chitwood covered bridge, along highway 20 heading for the coast, where the Portland and Western's line to Toledo passes by.

I took this shot at Chitwood, in an earlier day when the line was still called the Willamette and Pacific Railroad. The line had a bunch of old locomotives obtained from the Santa Fe, minimally repainted - the number changed and the W&P lettering had been added.

Here's a shot of the Gilkey bridge:

Big Flats

When I lived back east, one of the closest rail lines to my home was Conrail's route through New York's southern tier. This line was the former Erie Railroad mainline, the same one that went through Lanesboro Pennsylvania and the Canisteo River gorge. The line didn't have a lot of trains. In the early years of Conrail the railroad ran only two trains a day. This met the letter but not the spirit of the contract with the state of New York, who had invested heavily in rebuilding the line to retain industry in the few online towns. Some days the train would consist of two locomotives, a boxcar, and a caboose. Sometimes it seemed to us that it was the always same car running back and forth.

In later years traffic picked up, but it never was a busy line. By the 1990s eight trains a day were using the line. The timing was such that half of those passed through my area in a two hour period, with the line being dead for most of the other 22. I could go out about noon and almost always see four trains before heading home at 2. I could pick a photo location and know I'd get my shot. It was almost too easy.

On this late November day I captured an eastbound near the town of Big Flats, New York. The day was cold, but not snowy. The pond hadn't yet frozen over. The sun even popped through the clouds when I needed it to! But a storm was moving in, and the next morning I awoke to a blanket of white. I didn't see the ground this bare  nor the pond as ice free for months.

133,330 bottles of beer on the wall...

This isn't what you think it is. It is not 12,525 gallons of Bud Light. Beer is transported in refrigerated boxcars, or in shipping containers that are then loaded onto a train (or truck) for shipping. Cheap wine may be transported by tank car, but not beer.

This is a water car, which is strategically parked in territory prone to forest fires. The railroad fills them with water in the spring, and they sit at remote locations to be used in case of a fire. The railroad can hook up a locomotive and take them to places otherwise inaccessible. Since these cars sit for long periods of time in out of the way places, and generally are ignored unless there is a fire, they are susceptible to modification.

Years ago, on one of our camping trips up the hill, they guys and I were waiting for the next train to photograph. Since we had time to kill, we poked around, investigating the rail infrastructure including the parked water cars. One of the guys worked in advertising, and happened to have some stickers in his vehicle. I don't know who had the idea, but we all thought it amusing to apply the sticker to this car.

This photo is from earlier this fall, at least 10 years after the sticker was applied. I am greatly surprised how well it has withstood the ravages of time and weather.

Tunnel

If you've never been there, your impression of New York State is probably that it is wall to wall people, with greenery only to be found in parks, and the only thing rising above the flat ground being high rise buildings. That impression would be incorrect. Once you get out of the urban environment of the Big Apple (as they call New York City) things are quite different.

Upstate New York is predominantly rural. There are a few cities but mostly it is farm country, or wooded. It is not flat, being the northern part of the Appalachian mountain range. People are different, with residents quick to point out they are from "upstate" when asked. They generally don't like the attitude exhibited by the city dwellers, who regard upstaters as hicks.

As far as railroading goes, the terrain makes for some tough going. The Delaware and Hudson line from Binghamton to Albany has two mountain climbs that require helper locomotives, and a tunnel at the summit of the first mountain, at the appropriately named town of Tunnel, New York.

In October 1980 I captured a southbound D&H train exiting the tunnel. I had to climb on top of a signal bridge to get enough height to get this shot. It was a picture perfect fall day, not a common occurrence. Binghamton had a reputation as the land of liquid sunshine, and we photographers often  joked that we needed to open the back of the camera to get enough light to take a picture. The last year I lived in the area it set a new record for the least amount of sunshine in a month, only 14 hours for the entire month! Many years it would rain almost every weekend during the summer.

I was glad to leave!

More fall colors

Lanesboro, Pennsylvania is yet another small town in the wilds of northern Pennyslvania. It is known chiefly for being the home of the Starucca Viaduct, a massively high arched bridge built in 1847 by the New York and Erie Railroad, as part of their route to the west. The route - including the bridge - is still in use today.

In the mid 1980s Conrail used the line as a through route between New York City and Buffalo. Fortunately for us photographers, as many as six trains a day would traverse the route during daylight. Besides the bridge, the town had a cemetary, convieniently located adjacent to the tracks.

One picture perfect October day I was out with my buddys getting some fall color shots. While everyone else either went to the bridge or stayed at track level, I moseyed on down to the graveyard. I'd been here before scoping out the scene, but never had managed to catch a train just right, till this day.

Later on when we had a slide show, I got to see saw what the other guys had shot. I liked my scene much better. I went back to this location multiple other times after this, but never got another shot here as nice as this.

Park City

Before it became famous as a high rolling ski resort, Park City Utah was just another small town up in the mountains that had seen better times. Once a thriving mining town, in 1975 when I shot this picture of the Union Pacific Railroad depot it was a sleepy backwater. Even so, the depot was still in use though rail service was infrequent.

The inside gateway

There are three rail routes from Oregon into California. The least known of the three is the Inside Gateway route. used by the BNSF Railway. The line is the newest - built in 1931. It connected the Great Northern at Klamath Falls with the Western Pacific up through the Feather River Canyon. The lines met in the middle of nowhere, at Bieber, California. For many years this marked the place where the locomotives and cabooses of one line were exchanged with those of the other. This route connected with the Santa Fe Railroad in the Central Valley, providing a through route to the bay area. Because of its circuitous routing, it never could compete with the much shorter Southern Pacific routes to the west. Hence, the line never carried a lot of traffic.

In the present day, the Great Northern, the Western Pacific, and the Santa Fe are gone. The BNSF controls the entire route, and routes their California bound trains down this line.

In 1999 I captured a southbound at the appropriately named place of Stateline. The lead locomotive is within a few yards of crossing into California.

Classic paint

Throughout the years railroads have had some unique paint schemes for their cars and locomotives. These ranged from the regal like the Pennylvania's through the circus-like multi colors of some of the Florida roads. One of the more unique schemes was that of the Chessie System.

The Chessie System was relatively short lived. It was formed from the merger of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O),the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), and some minor lines in 1973. It's unique scheme featured a cat logo. The cat represented Chessie, a kitten used by the C&O for advertising purposes from 1933 until the line turned over it's passenger trains to Amtrak in 1971. Chessie was used to make the point that you would "sleep like a kitten" on the C&O's trains. When the Chessie was merged with the Seaboard Coast Line in 1980 the new corporation was renamed CSX. Their new scheme was a bland grey and blue and starting in the mid 80s equipment was repainted into the new colors.

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia is a small town with a rich history. Located at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, it was the site of a Federal Armory dating from 1799. This is where John Brown attacked in an attempt to incite a slave rebellion just prior to the Civil War. The original B&O mainline to the west runs through town, crossing the Potomac on a massive double track bridge that still carries heavy traffic.

On one of my visits I captured a short Chessie coal train crossing the Potomac bridge. Overlooking the scene is the famous "Hilltop House" a historic hotel that once hosted the rich and famous.



A better shot of the bridge and the Chessie Safety Special.

Another day, another special

A bunch of special trains have come through the Springfield area this summer. The Operation Lifesaver, the circus train, and a couple of inspection specials. It is a great change from the same old same old that I normally see.

I captured the latest one speeding through downtown Springfield. It is crossing the bridge over the Springfield Millrace. The power is another of the Union Pacific's heritage units, the 1983. It is numbered for the year that the UP took over the Western Pacific Railroad. I was told that one of the railroad VPs was onboard, inspecting the property.

Thurmond, West Virginia

Thurmond, West Virginia is one of those places. One of those places that a "normal" person would never go to. But then, I've never been normal.  Located in the New River Gorge, the town is wedged in a narrow valley shared by the river, the town, and the double track mainline. It is coal country, and once was a wild town. All types of vice flourished, and miners spent Saturday nights being relieved of their hard earned pay.

Those days are long gone. In July 1985 when I took this picture, the only business left was the Bankers Hotel (the red brick building nearly hidden by the locomotive) and associated cafe. My buddy and I stayed there, getting front rooms that looked out on the busy rail line, only separated by the one lane width of Main Street. We had come to shoot the NKP 765, pulling an excursion train through the scenic gorge. When the big steamer came through, the engineer put on a show for us, whistling and dirtying the sky with black  smoke. It was easy to imagine how things must have been years back, before diesels, when coal was still king.

Though I haven't been back for 25 years, things are different today. Thurmond has become a destination for recreationalists, folks who come to whitewater raft the New River. Most of the town is now owned by the National Park Service, as part of the new River Gorge National River. The entire town is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The first of many

My first ventures into rail photography took place when I lived in Wyoming, in the mid 1970s. The Burlington Northern Railroad's line through the Wind River Canyon ran a couple of thousand feet below where I lived. I was working as a television engineer, living on a mountaintop high above the canyon.

When I came down off that mountain every couple of weeks, I needed to amuse myself. There weren't a whole lot of things to do, even in town. I ultimately found myself trackside resuming an interest I had mostly given up for cars, planes, girls, and other adolescent pasttimes. But this time I had a camera.

There wasn't much left of Bonneville, Wyoming by the mid 1970s. Some trailer homes, a few dilapidated old buildings, a railroad siding, and this relic of a station from days gone by. This siding was the meeting place of the daily north and southbound trains, so the station was still in use, even to having an agent. I wandered around getting pictures of the station and approaching train. I wish now I had taken more.

The station at Bonneville was still there when I left Wyoming in 1980, but was no longer in service at that time. When I returned for a visit ten years later, it was gone, just a flat spot in the gravel and some broken concrete to mark it's place.

Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir is a small town in northern California, in the shadow of Mt. Shasta. It was known for the purity of it's water. The Southern Pacific Railroad was the driving economic force of town, and had a major facility which employed many local residents.

That was some years ago. The railroad still goes through, and Amtrak stops, but the rails don't have a big presence anymore. It is a crew change point, and still has a small yard and service facility, but otherwise doesn't see much action. The town's business district is quiet, now serving the tourists coming for the recreational opportunities or exiting off the interstate for food, fuel, or lodging.

The town still pays homage to it's rail heritage. This locomotive fuel storage tank honors the SP, and downtown has murals featuring trains of years gone by. There are several semaphore signals setup on Main Street. A few miles south of downtown is a motel where one can stay overnight in a restored caboose.

It is still a nice little town, I always try to stop when passing through.