Hey gang,
Sorry to be such a deadbeat lately, but work has been really crazy lately, and I haven't felt like firing up Photoshop to crop and resize pics...but I decided to make some time this weekend for the pick of the litter from 10/21-22 in the Altoona area.
We caught a 650 coal train that had 3 helper sets, 2 of them being on the rear. Here they are, rolling around The Curve:
Sunday morning Ed and I caught an ethanol train at the Rt. 53 overpass between Gallitzin and Cresson. Here's a shot of the helpers:
Traffic was light that weekend because NS decided to test the flammability of ethanol west of Pittsburgh, so we relied mainly on chasing to scare up the shots we wanted...here's the ethanol helpers at Tunnelhill:
Going farther east, we heard an eastbound at Lilly, so we hung out at Gallitzin...I chose our spot wisely, and was able to snap this telephoto of an eastbound coal drag passing the long-abandoned AR tower:
Turning to the east, my telephoto captures he helpers starting to drop down The Slide, the section of 2.12% grade with a permanent 12 MPH speed limit:
We knew light would be nice in the morning at The Brickyard, so we made that our next stop, easily beating that helper train with the help of my new chase vehicle:
We also waited for an eastbound TV train, trying to work in the classic signal bridge just west of the brickyard:
Moving farther east, we stopped at ALTO to pay homage and bag some blue:
Shortly after that, some nasty weather rolled in, and we retreated to the overpasses in downtown Altoona...here's an eastbound slab train passing Alto:
