21-10-30 PHOTOS: Harristober

No, this is not a rerun of a previous post. Due to having had two years off thanks to the Covid pandemic, I decided to double my number of visits to HARRIS tower with an early season visit added to my more typical final weekend visit. Will my initiative be rewarded? Read ahead and find out. Also included are some additional photos taken on my frequent Amtrak trips to and from Philly. You can find the full set of photos here ( mirror ).

Most times I get many photos of signals with few trains. At HARRIS the opposite is true as upwards of 50 NS and Amtrak train movements passing through this critical rail chokepoint by every day. This day would be no different with NS SD70ACe #1030 and ES44AC #8062 being first on the scene with a westbound intermodal train.

Although the days weather was rather crummy I was sheltered from the elements inside HARRIS tower with its restored and fully operational Union Switch and Signal Model 14 interlocking machine.

Some of the recent changes help visitors see how the mechanical interlocking works.



The next train to pass by was an eastbound intermodal with NS C44's-10W #7577 and #7532 sandwiching C44-9W #9973.

My luck did ultimately hold up as I was treated to N&W heritage ES44AC #8103 running ahead of sister ES44AC #8003.

21-10-14 PHOTOS: MOAPA

The National Parks are America's Best Idea, however sometimes it can be challenging to incorporate sufficient rail content into a national parks trip. During my 2021 visit to Bryce and Zion National parks in southern Utah I was able to identify a rail related point of interest in the small Nevada town of Moapa, just a mile or so off Interstate 15. Due to various circumstances I was able to finagle a stop there on both the outbound and inbound legs of the journey from Las Vegas and despite long odds, I was ultimately rewarded for my perseverance. You can find the full set of photos here ( mirror ).


The Moapa station/siding is located on the Union pacific Caliente Sub on what used to be Amtrak's old Desert Wind route, until that service was cancelled in 1997. The siding is 384 miles from Las Angeles and I visited the northern end due to its proximity to a paved road and potential fire fuel. Although the Caliente Sub had been resignaled during the great PTC purge, the old pole line had been abandoned in place and provided some interesting visual content.

The railroad location of MOAPA is about a mile north of the town of Moapa and within spitting distance of Path 27, a 500kv HVDC power line running from Salt Lake City to the Los Angeles basin.

Because I was with non-train people I only had limited time to take some photos of the location and I was not expecting to catch a train movement. While my friend gathered wood I was treated to some A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft flying out of nearby Nellis AFB.

Just before I was about to head out a Clear indication on the approach lit westbound mast signaled the presence of an approaching Union Pacific freight train.

It was a doublestack intermodal train led by Union Pacific SD70ACe #9048 and SD70Ms #4832 and #4543.

21-10-10 PHOTOS: EAST CONWAY

It's getting harder and harder to track down genuine PRR position lights these days, but after a major bout of resignaling wiped out the PL's on the former Conrail Fort Wayne Line west of Pittsburgh, a quirk of NS's policy of disinvestment somehow managed to preserve a stretch of ABS Rule 251 signaled track on the Cleveland Line in the Ohio River valley west of Rochester, PA. These signals had the benefit of also being located near the PRR's premier classification facility, Conway Yard so while in town for another event I took the opportunity to hit two birds with one stone with visits to both EAST CONWAY and the Milepost 2.7 intermediate signal location in Beaver, PA. The full gallery can be found here ( mirror ).

First stop were the milepost 2 intermediate signals located at the west end of the municipality of Beaver, PA. It is located in the shadow of the Interstate 376 bridge over the Ohio and across from the new Shell Oil Ethelene cracking plant that uses local frack gas to produce plastics. The eastbound signal can display Approach Slow for the slow speed route at CP-ROCHESTER. The former Conrail Cleveland Line takes an alternate routing to Alliance Ohio via the Ohio Valley and Yellow Creek. With local industry in decline, most through traffic travels via the Fort Wayne Line before switching over to the Cleveland Line at CP-ALLIANCE.

The next stop was the confluence of the Beaver River and the Ohio River that features two beefy steel age bridges built to take the weight of late steam age mega-locomotives. The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie cantilever bridge over the Ohio River is now part of the CSX Pittsburgh Sub on that railroad's Washington to Chicago service lane. One level below, the smaller PRR truss bridge over the Beaver River is still very impressive. The local waterfront is now a park overlooked by a new apartment block.

Previously part of CP-ROCHESTER, the logical triple junction between the Conrail Era Fort Wayne, Cleveland and Youngstown Lines, the 2019 re-signaling project split off the Cleveland Line single to double track switch into CP-BRIDGEWATER located on the west end of the Beaver River truss bridge.

Conway Yard in its current form was a post-war PRR project to increase efficiency on its primary east-west freight market. After its rebuild Conway had the distinction of being the world's largest from 1956 to 1980 with separate classification humps for both eastbound and westbound trains. Although one hunp was removed in the early 2000's (and sent to Enola Yard), Conway is still a major component of Norfolk Southern's New York to Chicago market. Conway Yard is largely paralleled by PA Route 65 from which I was able to get photos of a road slug set with NS GP40-2 #3091 and RP-E4C slug #745 along with AC44C6M rebuild #4233 in the DPU position at the rear of a coal train.

Beginning with the 1956 rebuild, rail traffic around Conway Yard was controlled by a Union Switch and Signal N-X type interlocking machine within EAST CONWAY tower. The tower survived both the coming and going of Conrail, ultimately being closed in the 2010's by NS.

The vehicle bridge over EAST CONWAY interlocking is a popular railfan spot, unfortunately the pneumatic switch machines were replaced in the 2019 resignaling project.

Trains can be frequently found waiting at either end of EAST CONWAY and on my trip NS AC44C6M #4340 was shifting cars in the westbound receiving yard and C44-9W #9856 waited at the 4-track westbound cantilever for a lineup into the yard.