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.