14-11-26 PHOTOS: Levittown

It has been a long running tradition of mine to head out with Chuchubob for some NEC railfanning on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Typically there are some Amtrak extra trains running along with generally increased consists. Unfortunately this year an early winter storm created hazardous driving conditions so I hit upon the idea of taking SEPTA Regional Rail to the Levittown (Pennsylvania) Station on the NEC to catch the mid-day parade of trains.

Originally planning to stay for two SEPTA R7 headways, the cold and general miserableness caused Bob to throw in the towel after just a single hour. Also the poor photographic conditions resulted in most of my product being in the form of a video montage. Still I have enough photos to throw up a full set. You can find the link to the full gallery here.

We begin at Levittown having just slighted from SEPTA Silverliner IV #352 as it stares at the 632 automatic signal.

Bringing up the rear was Silverliner IV #421.

The Levittown station was built along with the stereotype suburban community in the 1950's.

Tunnel bored under the NEC. I still don't see why this method of crossing the tracks is less preferable than building those stupid overpasses with the elevators on each end. 

The station interior was already in the holiday spirit. Unfortunately SEPTA can only afford to staff the station for a single shift and the agent was already in the process of locking the place up a little after noon.

One headway later outbound SEPTA R7 pulls in with SL-IV #458 in the lead.

The slanted platform canopy shares a design with the Curtis Park station on the R2.

Having laid over in Trenton, our outbound trainset returns with SL-IV #421 now in the lead.

  
Like I said, due to the poor weather conditions, all of the Amtrak action was captured on video that I then spliced together into a handy Montage. Sorry I don't have information on which train was which, but Amtrak was running out of order so Bob was only able to figure out what was what after the fact. Note the amount of snow on the front of the now training Metroliner cab car that was leading in from Harrisburg. This illustrates the location of the rain-snow line west of the city. Also note the difference in brightness between the AEM-7's traditional headlamps and the new LED headlamps on the ACS-86.