Mike's Rails

Texas Lumberjack

2010-03-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

Here is a Baldwin 1911 2-8-0 Consolidation located at the Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio. Owned by the C.W. Carter & Brothers Lumber Company in East Texas, there is a clear family relationship with another Texas lumberjack in Teague. TTM's #6 has made steam during the time it has been in San Antonio (1984) but I am unsure of its condition right now.

Below is a photo of a Baldwin Mikado class locomotive that's at the B-RI Museum in Teague, Texas. , which was owned by W.T. Carter & Brother Lumber Company. I enthusiastically recommend you visit both these quality museums, both volunteer operated and cared for. Texas Transportation is located right next to San Antonio International Airport. Teague is located right off Interstate 45

A Big Event in Railroad Preservation

2010-03-18T09:24:00.003-04:00

Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society Presents $50,000 To Railroad Museum Friends

Al Buchan, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society recently presented the Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania with a check for $50,000. This sum represented the matching gift from the PRRT&HS's challenge to the Railroad Museum to raise $50,000 for the restoration of the historic Lindbergh Engine in six months.

"It gives me great pleasure to represent both the PRRT&HS as its current president as well as the PRR as a former employee and official," stated Buchan. Raising $50,000 in matching funds is quite an accomplishment especially in our current difficult economic times, and shows how great the interest is in preserving a part of the late, great PRR."

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania director Charles Fox said that the Museum had met the match of $50,000 on March 1, 2010, just two weeks shy of the end of the campaign.
"We were delighted to accept this gift from our generous friends at the PRRT&HS, on behalf of everyone who has contributed to the restoration of PRR E6 locomotive No. 460. The Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania had already raised $50,000 for the Museum's famed Lindbergh Engine when, late last summer, the PRRT&HS came forward and issued their challenge. This group recognizes the importance of preserving an artifact of this caliber and is willing to commit much-needed funds to the project. We are truly grateful for their support. Donations are still coming in and the Friends will continue to raise funds for the restoration of this engine through their annual fund and other methods at their disposal."

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and one of the artifacts from the famed Pennsylvania Railroad Historical Collection, No. 460 is slated to enter the Museum's restoration shop sometime this month. Current estimates are that, even with $150,000 for the restoration of this locomotive, an additional $235,000 will still be needed. The project is anticipated to take more than 10,000 hours, or three to four years, to complete.

"Only with financial and volunteer support of the railfan community can the Railroad Museum continue to meet its overwhelming and seemingly unending challenge to restore the collection," Buchan asserted. "If we, collectively, are not part of the solution, we're part of the problem. We cannot attack and solve this problem through the rose-colored glasses of idealism but rather through the pragmatic lenses of realism."

photos from Friends of the Railroad Museum, Strasburg, PA

Just Before Katrina

2010-03-17T05:00:00.001-04:00

Just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina in 2005 I caught this set of BNSF locomotives led by Dash 9 5256 stopped next to the Mississippi River levee at the west end of St. Charles Avenue. This is an area that stayed dry during the post-hurricane flooding. This is why the old St. Charles Ave. streetcars survived to carry on for the Canal Street and Riverfront lines when their cars were submerged by the flood waters. I visited New Orleans again in 2007 and most of the bad stuff I heard about looked to be true. North New Orleans is characterized by mountains of debris, empty lots, and boarded-up businesses. The French Quarter and Garden District seem relatively unchanged except for some closed businesses.

Run Fast - It Won't Stop For You

2010-03-15T05:00:00.003-04:00

Here comes the train! Ya viene el tren! It's 1965 and there's the Nacionales De Mexico narrow gauge passenger train from Amecameca to Mexico City. At the Popo Park station the train slows down but does not stop for you to board. That's my wife below running in heels and a suit to get on board. The conductor is looking out from the first class car steps to help the passengers.

Good News at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

2010-03-12T12:02:00.004-05:00

After so much negative news about state budget problems and layoffs it's nice to see good news as reported today by Larry Alexander in the Lancaster Intelligencer/New Era.

Here's a photo of mine of part of the street scene.

You May Not Photograph This

2010-03-12T05:00:00.000-05:00

These are the platforms at Amtrak's Pennsylvania Station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Amtrak's policy is that you may not take photographs here. Not even Amtrak's CEO can explain why this goofy policy exists. It does, though. I have asked Amtrak for permission to photograph and been told, in writing, that I was forbidden to photograph on station platforms. I do it anyway. This is alienating a lot of people (railroad photographers) who would otherwise be active Amtrak supporters.

Amtrak - Fotografieren Verboten

2010-03-11T05:00:00.001-05:00

Look! This the the platform at Amtrak's station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (photography forbidden by Amtrak). The picture shows waiting passengers. Also forbidden by Amtrak.

Good Trainwatching - Photography Forbidden

2010-03-10T05:00:00.001-05:00

This is one of the places where Amtrak forbids, yes forbids, you to take pictures. How or why they came up with this loony policy they can't even explain. It is costing them the support of many people like me who are natural Amtrak supporters.

I think I know a good trainwatching spot when I see one, and Perryville, Maryland is definitely one of the best. At one time a very active PRR, PC and Amtrak station, Perryville's passenger activity is limited to the weekday commuting trains of the MARC Penn Line. The platform will be all yours if you come during off-peak hours 9AM to 3PM. You will not have to wait long to see the full array of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service from Acela Express to Regionals to The Crescent, the Silver Star and the Silver Meteor. Running under catenary with Amtrak's most powerful locomotives, these trains make up what I think is one of the few Amtrak regions that make real transportation sense. Since the station is at the north end of the Susquehanna River bridge, trains run a reduced speed of 90 MPH; still fast enough for good speed photographs. You'll usually get a fast blast of the horn from the engineer, too.

This station is also the point where Norfolk Southern's Port Road line starts its run along the east bank of the Susquehanna river to Harrisburg and Enola. Freight traffic can usually only be seen at night because of Amtrak's use of the bridge crossing the river. This is an example of the nuttiness of American passenger rail policy. While European and Japanese countries have many dedicated rail routes for passengers, Amtrak must share the few rails they own with as many as 16 freight railroads. Just half a mile upriver from the Perryville station you can watch freight trains on the CSX Transportation's B&O route with it's own bridge crossing the Susquehanna.

Amtrak Photography Policy to Change?

2010-03-08T20:17:00.003-05:00

You will see in the next week some posts from me showing places I have photographed where Amtrak, in its misguided approach to security, forbids photography. Amtrak President Joseph Boardman, in a March 6 meeting with the public in Chicago, tried to mollify critics by saying the photography policy is really an attempt to get photographers to notify railroad personnel before photographing in "restricted areas" like station platforms. This photographer has made such notification to Amtrak personnel in Washington DC and received in return written instructions forbidding me to photograph on station platforms. This in direct contravention of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. John O'Connor, the railroad's chief of police, defended criticism of Amtrak's policy toward photography on station platforms as a necessary step to prevent terror attacks. How ridiculous! Does Chief O'Connor realize all the things he's trying to protect are available online by the thousands? The only positive thing I can see coming from the Chicago meeting is a statement from Amtrak that they are going to look into BNSF's Citizens for Rail Security, an organization of which I am a member. See Trains Magazine trains.com for details of the Chicago meeting including a pleasant surprise for attendees at the meetings conclusion.

Tragedy and Graffiti

2010-03-08T05:00:00.000-05:00

I hesitated for weeks before posting this Reuters photo of the train collision in Belgium that took over 20 lives. I just don't feel I should comment and will just post the picture.

Classic Railroad Station to be Reborn, maybe

2010-03-06T09:12:00.003-05:00

Check out this story in the New York Times. They're talking about restoring the Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Despite the name, the Michigan Central was the New York Central's Michigan route through Detroit, Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo to Chicago with named trains like the Wolverine. Trains departed Buffalo into Canada and went through St. Thomas to Windsor and the tunnel across the border to Detroit. Both Canadian and US customs and imigration conducted their business aboard the train. I last traveled the route in 1955 in a roomette from Albany to Kalamazoo.

The First GP30

2010-03-05T05:00:00.001-05:00

Reading Company GP30 No. 5513 shown here in the yard of the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society at Temple Station, Pennsylvania was the first of 946 GP30's built by EMD in LaGrange, IL. The Reading ordered 20 GP30's including 5513 and used them widely in all types of service. Number 5513 is currently out of service due to turbocharger problems and is in need of donations in order to bring it back into service for the RCT&HS.

GP30's are very popular with modelers because of the distinctive hump faired into the cab roof. Railroaders I have talked to who ran GP30's tell of numerous electrical glitches as well as high oil consumption related to this first use of the turbocharger by EMD on the 567 prime mover. At Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, the GP30 painted as Conrail 2233 is one of the most popular artifacts with visitors. GP30's are still in service with Class I's BNSF and CSX Transportation (whose GP30's are road slugs with no prime mover). GP30's are also found on branch line roads like Cimarron Valley out of Satanta, Kansas and Indiana Northeastern whose number 2185 was built in 1962 as Reading 5517

For 20 years I worked a few blocks from The Reading Company's vast shops along 6th street in Reading. I took many lunchtime walks next to the shops and thought I had absorbed some knowledge. As a rookie RR Museum volunteer in 2004 I learned quickly from my peers that there was never a "Reading Railroad" and I am now used to referring to it as "The Reading" or "The Reading Company" or "The Philadelphia & Reading" or "The Reading Lines". My favorite train watching spots in the country are all on Norfolk Southern's Reading Line between Bethlehem and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania.

Spot Color Lesson

2010-03-03T05:00:00.002-05:00

Sometimes a color photo of a subject in a "busy" background can be made more effective by using the spot color editing technique. I use Adobe Photoshop Essentials 4 for my editing but any image editing software that lets you work in layers will do.

Here's a picture of historic Baldwin Mogul class Virginia & Truckee #20 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. There are other museum exhibits in the picture as well as the overhead structure of the museum's rolling stock hall.

The first thing to do is change this to a black and white image. I do this by adding an "adjustment" layer on top of the original photo. This layer is a "mask" that makes changes to the image layer below it without changing the original image itself. I choose a "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer. In the adjustment layer I turn color saturation of the entire image as low as it will go thereby resulting in a black & white photo. Remember, the adjustment layer changes how we see the original, not the original itself. The result is this:

Now the usefulness of the adjustment layer mask really comes into play. It you paint on the masking layer itself with a black brush, you remove the mask effect where you have painted, letting the original image below come through. If you remove too much you can correct by painting with a white brush. I just let some of the color of the locomotive show through to isolate it and call attention to it rather than all the "busy" black and white features and here's what results:

Finally after all this you can save your work with your editor's own format to preserve the layers or you can "flatten" the image which gives you a single layer incorporating all your changes you can save as a jpeg or tiff file.

Fiscal Responsibility Has Real Consequences

2010-03-01T13:34:00.004-05:00

When arguing for government fiscal responsibility you have to realize you're talking about the jobs and lives of real people. Elected officials sometimes forget this.

If a Congressman wants to cut spending and openly admits the number of people who will lose jobs then I have no problem in backing the spending cuts. The Congressman has to own up to the real consequences in terms his constituents will easily understand.

See the example in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette about Kentucky Representative Jim Bunning (yeah, the pitcher for our Phillies) . It sounds like the Congressman is taking a responsible position from the viewpoint of fiscal conservatives.

The problem is that the problem of transportation is not being realistically addressed by Congress. Here's the problem: the transportation of people is not a profitable business model. With the exception of a few airline routes and cruise ships it is not possible to charge fares that will cover expenses plus a return on investment. Some people could afford realistic fares, but their numbers would not be enough.

Think passenger transportation can be profitable? OK, name me a profitable airport or a profitable highway.

Tough times and tough decisions.

High Altitude Diesels and Scenery

2010-03-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

I took this picture in April, 2006 in Alamosa, Colorado. At about 7,500 feet above sea level on the banks of the Rio Grande, Alamosa is the only city in the San Luis Valley. The valley is claimed to be the largest high alpine valley on earth. It sure has the scenery. Bordered on the east by the Sangre de Cristo mountains and on the west by the San Juan mountains it reaches from Poncha Pass in the north to the Taos Pueblo to the south in Mew Mexico. The highest sand dunes in the country form Great Sand Dunes National Park. Fort Garland was once commanded by Kit Carson during his long military career. In the same area American Bison roam the range in large numbers. The valley is also home to the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad, whose excursion trains link Alamosa to La Veta over a 9,500 foot pass, and to Antonito, the northern terminus of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad.

The locomotive? It's EMD GP39-2 built in LaGrange in 1978 according to the builder's plate. As pictured it was being leased to the San Luis & Rio Grande by Independent Locomotive Services. Its history is unclear: maybe ex-UP 2750, originally Kennecott 797?

Big and Little

2010-02-26T05:00:00.001-05:00

Here in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania the engineer of little (12 miles) Lancaster Northern Railroad waits for big Norfolk Southern to let him out on the NS Reading Line main to take his customer's loads to the Reading yard for interchange. The Harrisburg East dispatcher has told the crew that after this train there is a "Hot Shot" approaching "Dorf" (Womelsdorf) and after that he will let them onto the main. Note the meeting of General Electric generations as well. Lancaster Northern 2202 is a former Providence & Worcester GE U23B and NS 9532 is a GE Dash 9 almost 30 years younger.

Little guys like Lancaster Northern, part of Penn Eastern Railroad, keep customers like feed mills, building supply dealers, and steel fabricators connected with necessary transportation that helps to hold down manufacturing costs and reduces the number of trucks on the highway.

Passenger Train Derails in Quebec

2010-02-25T10:44:00.003-05:00

A Via Rail train with 125 passengers on board derailed at 04:25 today in the South Shore area of Quebec City destroying the porch of a house. Catch the details here from the CBC.

Southern Pacific Daylight

2010-02-24T05:00:00.001-05:00

I photographed SP train 99, the northbound Coast Daylight, at Burbank, California in 1968. A cousin had bought a bargain Pentax SLR for me at the Navy ship's store in Guam, and I was out early on a Saturday morning trying it out.

Trains have fascinated me since early childhood. I grew up in El Paso, Texas and Mexico City, Mexico. I attended prep school in Mount Hermon, Massachusetts where I could see the Central of Vermont across the Connecticut River, and where I traveled by Boston & Maine and New Haven railroads. I went to college in San Luis Obispo, California where the Southern Pacific coast route makes a horseshoe curve around the Cal Poly campus at the foot of Cuesta Hill. Meets of the Coast Daylights could be seen around noon every day. In the mid-50's steam helpers were still at work on the Cuesta grade. Why all this blah, blah, blah? These 2 photos are part of about 20 or so that have survived from my early life. Oh well, you can't go back, can you?

Strasburg Railroad Dreaming of Spring

2010-02-22T05:00:00.000-05:00

Things are pretty quiet out at the Strasburg Railroad during this snowy Winter. The best we can do is dream of the warmer days to come.

Tehachapi Derailment & Florida Tragedy

2010-02-21T09:38:00.004-05:00

A BNSF freight train derailed in Kern County, California Saturday morning at the Tehachapi Loop tunnel entrance just South of Keene, California. The train was headed from Barstow to Stockton. One tank car carrying denatured alcohol ruptured and caught fire. Some Residents of the area were evacuated to a temporary shelter set up at Tehachapi High School.

Kern County Sheriff's deputies helped with evacuations, while the Kern County Fire Department responded to deal with the fire and possible hazardous materials spill.

In other Saturday 2/20 news, 3 teenage girls were killed crossing a Florida East Coast Railway bridge in Melbourne. Totally preventable, and a reminder why Project Lifesaver should be in every school.

Here Comes TIGER

2010-02-18T17:01:00.002-05:00

It stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery and it means a lot of money for railroad projects. Here's a short list:

CREATE - a first-of-its-kind partnership between U.S. DOT, the State of Illinois, City of Chicago, Metra, Amtrak, and the nation's freight railroads. $100 million to improve rail access across the Chicago area, currently a serious choke point. Click here

National Gateway - $98 million for opening up CSX rail corridors in the Mid Atlantic states. Click here

Crescent Corridor - $105 million for Norfolk Southern corridor expansion between Louisiana and New Jersey. Click here

One of the biggest TIGER grants is going to the Penn Station New York City expansion project. Read about it here

Still reading reports about "High Speed" passenger rail projects in various states. Little or nothing about acquiring exclusive passenger rail right of way. Passenger rail running on freight rails is never going to be high speed in the European or Asian style.

A Meeting of Norfolk Southern Geeps

2010-02-17T09:41:00.006-05:00

EMD GP38-s's like thse have become the common switcher used at Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Norfolk Southern Dillerville yard. I've changed background here for more emphasis on these good, useful machines.

Good Collection of Norfolk Southern Power

2010-02-15T05:00:00.001-05:00

On a crisp Winter day in Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Dillerville yard a set of NS power waits for yard action. NS 6197 is an EMD SD40-2 ex Norfolk & Southern. NS 872 is and RP06 road slug ex SD40. Number 6197 would be the "Mother" unit supplying the power to 872's six axles. Trailing NS 5655 is an EMD GP38-2 ex Lehigh Valley and one of a half-dozen or so GP38's stationed at this historic yard that dates back to the 19th century.

New Blog Direction

2010-02-13T10:04:00.002-05:00

I feel I've done all I can do for the time being regarding Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and the Strasburg Railroad. From time to time I'll re-post something from a couple of years back for those institutions. My main emphasis is going to be Norfolk Southern, my local freight railroad; Amtrak and SEPTA, my local passenger roads; and current industry news I've picked up from sources like the American Association of Railroads.

One personal note: I plan to become a certified Project Lifesaver presenter this Spring and will integrate that into special events at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

Silverliner Heritage

2010-02-12T05:00:00.002-05:00

The Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority has ordered 104 new electrified multiple unit cars from Japan-Korea based United Transit Systems for a price of $2.98 million each. Above, a SEPTA Silverliner pulls into the Downingtown, Pennsylvania station on December 28, 2006.

Below, Pennsylvania Railroad 247, a Silverliner I, is paired with number 246 at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg. Built by the Budd Company as Pioneer III in 1958, this was the first prototype of a long-lived line of dependable, good-looking passenger cars. These two cars were rescued at the last moment from a trip to Pueblo, Colorado to become crash test vehicles. They are on non-prototype trucks and had been stripped of all their electric equipment.

There is no better way to go into Philadelphia especially if one qualifies for the $1 senior fare.