19-01-12 PHOTOS: Station Sidetrips

Not much was going on in January 2019 so I patched together a couple of trips to DC area MARC stations and to the SRNJ short line base at Winslow Jct, NJ during the NJT Atlantic City Line hiatus. You can find the full set of photos here (mirror).

The Garrett Park Brunswick Line MARC station, located on the former B&O railroad Metropolitan Sub, is situated between the two prongs of the WMATA Red Line north of the city. It consists of a small inbound shelter and low level platforms for the peak direction weekday service.

Parking is highly limited and the station primarily serves walking distance neighborhoods on both sides of the tracks.

The old mill town of Kensington has been subsumed by suburban housing developments, but the old town core still features a vintage B&O railroad station.

Although largely converted into a coffee shoppe, the station still features a waiting room and ticket vending machines. 

The falling snow would soon start to accumulate making condition a bit treacherous. 

Moving to Winslow Jct, despite some recent scrappings, the SRNJ still has three MLW (Alco) M420 locomotives on the ready service tracks. These consisted of CNJ painted numbers 3578, 3519 and 3517 and NYO&W painted #800.

Montreal Locomotive Works continued to build Century series locomotives for over a decade after the demise of US parent company Alco, but was eventually absorbed into the Bombardier ecosystem in the 1980's. The M420s were roughly equivalent to an EMD GP38, however only about 80 were produced.

#800 is riding on an earlier model of Alco truck, that were likely part of some sort of trade-in plan. The NYO&W scheme is due to the former owner of the SRNJ having a thing for that particular regional railroad.   Note the Canadian style class lights above the number boards.

A spare Alco 251C V12 diesel engine was sitting out back behind the engine house.

The NJT Atlantic City line had been ostensible shut down for the installation of the ACSES train control syste. The only traffic was MoW and the SRNJ freight trains to Atlantic City.

ACSES primarily relies on legacy cab signaling and fixed transponders to inform the on board speed control mechanism. Data radios are used for some more advanced functionality, but are not required.

WINSLOW tower still stands although the bay window has been fully boarded up. NJT radio equipment is housed inside.

Signs of the line's suspension were evident at the nearby Atco, NJ station.

Heading back from South Jersey I caught NS GP38-2's #5308 and #5639 sandwiching a cut of local cars on the NS Reybold Branch as it makes a late night crossing of Delaware Route 4 in Newark, en route to join Amtrak's NEC at DAVIS interlocking.



As an added bonus I caught DC Metro 5000-series car #5106 being trucked up I-95 for scrapping near Baltimore. Purchased in 2001, WMATA decided to retire the 5000-series after only 17 years in service (opposed to the more usual 40) because the Federal government was covering the cost for 7000-series replacements.

 Well that's it for this week, next time I'll be traveling back to Albany for a look around Selkirk, NY.