In my first semester of grad school I was largely confined to the Balt-Wash metro area, however the week of Thanksgiving still provided for a chance to go on some weekday railfan adventures with my (then) new buddy, Chuchubob. This set of photos contains both my continued coverage of Baltimore Penn Station and the Baltimore Belt Line as well as my Thanksgiving week visit to SMS's operations at the Penn Warner industrial park in Morrisville, PA. The full set of photos can be found here ( mirror ).
We begin with CSX AC4400 #5117 exiting the St. Paul tunnel on the westbound downgrade towards Mt. Royal Station and Camden Yards. The fall foliage provided by the curbside maple trees was regrettably lost in 2014 when the retaining wall collapsed after a 3 day rain storm.
It was about this time that I discovered a technique to take timed
exposure of night Belt Line movements as they emerged from and/or
approached the two tunnels adjacent to the open cut between St. Paul and
Charles Streets. Although this technique revived my interest in Belt
Line photos again. my enthusiasm for monitoring to my scanner and
booking it down the back alley to get a photo eventually waned again.
Note the westbound CPL dwarf signal for HUNTINGDON AVE interlocking mounted to the side of the tunnel.
At Baltimore Penn Station I caught MARC GP39H-2 #72 hanging out on track #4. The MARC GP39 fleet would survive the coming of the MP36PH-3C fleet that replaced the GP40WH-2's that were actually several years newer (although based on older donor equipment).
Also at Penn Station a fairly new Acela Express trainset with power cars #2003 and #2015 heading northbound on Track #6.
It's hard to overstate just how much the white LED revolution improved night photography. Here Amtrak SW1500 #541 couples to the rear of a Regional trainset in order to tow it back to the yard.
SMS Lines is a Class 3 terminal railroad that operates divisions in South Jersey, Morrisville, PA and Albany, NY. SMS is best known for its daily revenue use of Baldwin diesel locomotives and although most of these are located near their South Jersey shoppes, a single unit is typically detailed to switch the Penn-Warner industrial park in Morrisville, PA. In 2003 this unit was DS-4-4-1000 #302.
The Penn-Warner also used 2 cabeese, an ex-PRR N5C and an ex-PC N11, for office space and storage.
Thanks to Bob knowing the crew, we got to go around with them as they shifted a few pre-holiday carloads. #302 was outfitted for winter with plastic sheeting covering the radiator to help prevent the cooling water from freezing up. The prime mover was a Baldwin model 608NA 8-cylinder inline diesel developing 1000hp.
Inside the unit looked pretty good for something that had been built in the 1940's. It also had additional seating for the old 5 person crews.
Heading up to the NS interchange at Morrisville Yard, Conrail painted C40-8W #8388 could be seen with ex-Conrail SD60M #6788 and NS standard cab C39-8 #8209 across what would become NJT's Morrisville Yard. Neither of those three classes of locomotive are still in service with NS.
Short line railroaders have to do it all including ad hoc track repair.
The engineer that day was fellow railfan Ed Weller, who had hired on with SMS as a retirement job. He had first tried conducting with CSX, but quit after working 39 consecutive 12-hour days. SMS offered far better work-life balance allowing him to work 14 hours in a typical week. Ed would unfortunately pass away suddenly a few years later. SMS engine #301 is named in his honor.
No comments:
Post a Comment