November 2017 - The Trackside Photographer

Posted on November 30, 2017December 7, 2017 by admin

The Union and Me

EMD SD40 – Photograph by Nate Beal (originally posted to Flickr as Testing the IS) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All in a Night’s Work

Dispatcher On The Radio: “Mr. MacDermot, AB2 had to set off a unit last night account a slipped pinion. It’s on the siding near the signal on the west side of Richmondville hill; could you arrange to get someone out there to cut the pinion off so we can move the unit?” (“Slipped pinion” is railroad lingo for a locked axle, usually.)

“What’s the unit number and did they say what axle has the slipped pinion?”

“It’s one of them ex-Detroit Edison 6-axle EMD SD40’s; I think he said it’s number three pair of wheels that were locking up.”

“OK, I’ll see if I can get someone from Oneonta to meet me out there – might have to get a track department person to slide a tie out to make room to drop the gear case.” Dispatcher Over-And-Out Read more

Posted on November 21, 2017November 30, 2017 by admin

Editor’s Notebook

Coming Home

Late in the 1945, a Navy ship with my father aboard docked in San Diego. The war was over and Dad was going home. A train carried him across the country that he had fought in the Pacific to preserve and protect. He rode through the small towns and the big cities. He watched other servicemen reunited with their family on the platforms of small stations scattered across the nation. He dozed in his coach seat while America streamed by the window. Read more

Posted on November 9, 2017November 16, 2017 by admin

The Power of Place

I have a fondness for steam radiators. That gentle heat soaks right down to the bone and although the houses I grew up in didn’t have them, the Pennsylvania depot did.

From the time I was five or six years old my dad and I made a pilgrimage to watch trains at the Pennsylvania Railroad depot in Richmond, Indiana every Sunday morning. The waiting room was our refuge from the cold and I was never very far from one of those big radiators.

Daniel Burnham’s design for the PRR depot has a new lease on life that should see it standing strong for many years to come. – Photo taken September 1, 2017.

The main objects of our quest were two westbound passenger trains that were still on the Pennsy’s schedule in the 1960s. My memory is faulty where the early train is concerned, though a check of a 1960 timetable suggests it might have been No. 71 or the Cincinnati Limited. Read more

Posted on November 2, 2017November 9, 2017 by admin

An Afternoon
on the Buffalo Southern

Heading back home in October, 2014 after three days in Ontario, Canada, I decided to drop off the interstate in Hamburg, New York to see if I could scare up an Alco or two. I knew only two things about Hamburg; first, the Buffalo Southern Railroad had a shop there and second, that shop was home to my favorite diesel locomotives—Alco. It isn’t a big town, so finding the tracks wasn’t hard and they led to a small station, behind which sat a beautifully restored Alco High Hood switcher and an old friend from the Pittsburgh area, a Pennsylvania Railroad decapod (2-10-0), now sitting on display. A few derelict (likely parts sources) 539 powered Alco switchers were there also, slowly rusting away. The Buffalo Southern shop wasn’t here, that was for sure, but there was a hobby shop sign on the station door, so in I went, finding a large “O” scale layout occupying most of the space. Three old guys sat in a corner swapping stories and I asked them if they could point me to the Buffalo Southern shop complex. “Yeah, they’re down behind the Carmeuse plant, but don’t go in there cause they’ll arrest you or throw ya out.” There were nods all around in agreement to that statement, so I thanked them and headed off to find me some Alco’s—I’ve been escorted out of a few places after simply wandering in like a bumpkin, so it was no big deal to take a chance.