The former Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Coatesville, PA occupies a strange in-between space. It's beyond the reach of SEPTA Regional Rail, which terminates about 4 miles to the east at Thorndale, but still handles a lot of Philadelphia commuter traffic. Once a significant steel town, Coatesville has slowly evolved into a bedroom community for people priced out of closer in suburbs. Ironically the station once boasted a limited SEPTA scheduled in a similar manner to MARC's Perryville service, but the cost of maintaining a 2-shift operator job at PARK tower in Parkesburg to turn the trains forced SEPTA to cut service back to Downingtown leaving passengers to rely on Amtrak's Keystone trains to get to Philly and beyond. Left to deteriorate for decades, Coatesville is finally getting its replacement station and, hopefully, restored SEPTA service. In this set of photos ( mirror ) I'll explore the old Coatesville station, pop by the old tower at LANDIS and then finish out the day at HARRIS tower in Harrisburg.
It might not look like it, but the Coatesville station building actually dates from 1868. Likely used up into the Amtrak SEPTA era, the building was ultimately closed and boarded up, suffering a fire in 2014 which gutted most of the second story. In 2020 the building was cosmetically restored to play the role of the Easttown police station in the award winning HBO drama, Mare of Easttown. This is why it bares the street address of 1223 Fake St, instead of its actual number of 259 Fleetwood St. The outline from the Railroad Express Agency diamond can still be seen on the front of the building.
In 1911 the Coatesville Station infrastructure was upgraded at the tail end of the PRR's eastern PA freight upgrades which included the Atglen and Susquehanna plus Philadelphia and Thorndale low grade lines and general 4-tracking of the Main Line between the two. Making use of the new wonder material, reinforced concrete, the new station featured two side platforms, an underpass using the bridge over third street and stairways up to both grade separated platforms.
For years the track-level infrastructure consisted of two truncated low level platforms, a short wooden shelter with bench, a bay window with station information and what appears to be an ADA ramp into the upper level of the station which may have contained an elevator.
Before Washington DC Metro operator WMATA realized it could scam the Federal Government into purchasing new equipment, they did the sensible thing and performed mid-life overhauls on its classes of equipment with the goal of a 40 year service life. It is in this context that WMATA's 76 2000-series cars, delivered in 1981 by Brea Iron Road Construction, managed to avoid the early retirement dealt out to the 4000 and 5000 series cars. Despite the class' small numerical size, WNATA pulled out all the stops to celebrate their final day of service with a special set making Green Line trips between Greenbelt and Branch Ave on Saturday, October 19th, 2024. I went out that day and managed to collect a modest set of photos and video ( mirror ) documenting the festivities.
Like the famous NYCTA Holiday Nostalgia Train, the 2k Farewell Train consisted of a full 6 car set of 2000-series cars and would run in regular service all day between Greenbelt and Branch Ave. Here the set pulls into the Greenbelt platform from the yard.
Also unlike some other farewell trips, WMATA managed to dig out the class pair, #2000 and #2001, to lead the consist in the southbound direction. Each of the 6 cars also had special last ride decals applied behind the cab windows and WMATA even managed to get ahold of the operator who operated the 2000 series cars on their first revenue run to conduct a round trip on their final run. Talk about closure!
Metro's 350 Rohr-built 1000-series cars from 1976 had been the first to be rebuilt in the mid-1990's, with an AC traction setup being the major change. The 2000-series cars went to Alstom for their rebuild around the year 2000 where they also received mew interior fittings that replaced the largely orange 1970's seat cushions with a contemporary light blue and also replaced the carpeting with a washable epoxy floor material.
The Green Line runs parallel to the former B&O Washington Branch with speeds up to 70mph, so with much of the rest of the route in a tunnel I took the opportunity to grab some head end video between Greenbelt and Hyattsville and later while approaching Branch Ave. Unfortunately an adjacent railfan who was also taking video had decided to test their voiceover chops instead of allowing the cars to speak for themselves.
The second part of my whirlwind Columbus Day Weekend tour of the Connecticut River valley wasn't just about fall foliage as the Vermonter Route re-signaling project was accelerating and I still had a couple key locations to visit in the Bellows Falls area. This set ( mirror ) will also cover my return trip back south with stops at Springfield and New Haven.
Driving in from Keene I passed by the Green Mountain Railroad backlot, which is ironically across the river in New Hampshire as opposed to Vermont. Visible from the car was former New York Central RDC #M-453 and Bangor and Aroostook painted private car #101.
A previous track configuration created some phantoms in the signaling system with an Approach Medium at the north end of the Walpole siding leading to a Medium Clear over a straight route at the south end. These southbound signals along with the one at the BELLOWS FALLS diamond were displaying a route for that day's Vermonter.
Passengers were already waiting inside the Bellows Falls station, which is shared with the Green Mountain Railroad's excursion trains. Vermonter Route stations are staffed by a volunteer station host program.
That days southbound Vermonter Train 57 was pretty much on time and lead by P42DC #112. The valley the station is located in creates a pretty neat horn echo effect.
I was booked on a 4pm Amtrak Springfield Shuttle train out of Springfield, so after a quick lunch I got dropped off and walked through the new Bus depot built on the location of Union Station's old baggage office, which included the New York Central's TOWER 96. You can see the new bricks patching the side of the main Union Station building.
Shuttle Train 465 was departing from low level track #8 and featured Phase III Heritage P42DC #145 and Metroliner Cab Car #9646.
I was connecting to a southbound Acela so I had time to linger on the platform and catch various Metro North and Amtrak action.
Walking over to the Amtrak New Haven engine terminal I managed to catch "Phase L" 50th anniversary heritage P42DC #100 along with #145 and sibling Ps42DC #89 and #95.
While waiting for my Acela on platform A, Springfield Regional Train 140 arrived on platform B and began the process of swapping out its electric ACS-86 #603 with diesel P42DC #95.
On track #3 was MNRR M8 #9200, which was the first of the 150 MTA owned cars.
It was too dark for a photo of Acela power car #2031 at New Haven, but I snagged one at Penn Station.
That's it for my Fall 2024 Connecticut Valley trip. Next time I'll be in DC to say Farewell to the WMATA 2000-series railcars.
For Columbus Day weekend 2024 I set myself the major goal of finally going to Hartford to explore the former New Haven station there and hiking out to the derelict HART interlocking tower north of the Central Business District. Despite going to school in the area and passing through Hartford countless times on Amtrak's Springfield Line, I had never found the time to get off there, even after the opening of the CR Rail Hartford commuter rail line in the 2010's as a stopover always seemed to involve getting to New Haven by like 8am. Well in 2024 I finally decided to bite the bullet and take overnight Train 66 to get to New Haven, but given some other priorities the plan became a bit more complicated ( mirror ) than catching it at the BWI Airport Rail Station.
The complication was needing to stop by Philly to see family at some point this weekend. My solution was to catch an afternoon Amtrak Regional to Philly, pop across the Delaware River on PATCO, deal with stuff, then return to 30th St in time for Train 66's midnight departure. This had me setting off from BWI in daylight where I managed to catch Veterans ACS-86 #642. MARC MP36PH-3C #35, SC44 #80 and cab cars #7852 and #8054 before my Regional with ACS-86 #616 arrived..
For some reason my Regional set had been reversed and I was able to get some photos and video out the back. Here my train transits northbound through the ailing B&P tunnel.
Making the cross-river transfer courtesy SEPTA and PATCO.
Finally returning to 30th St Station close to midnight where the short consist Regional Train 66 was sporting two ACS-86 electric locomotives, #664 and #662.
Because Train 66 can be pretty loud, to ensure a good night's sleep I managed to book a single seat one one of the old Metroliner Service first class cars that now serve as Business class on Train 66/67. I conked out at some point before Penn Station and when I got off New Haven and #664 was nowhere to be seen.
It was perfect October weather and Metro North M8 EMU's were hanging out on various shoppe and storage tracks.
With Shore Line East service having been M8-ified, the previously diesel hauled equipment was now on Hartford Line duty. My train was waiting on Tack 12 with P40DC #6711 in the Coke Zero scheme and Mafersa cab car #1701.
One might assume that things would be pretty quiet at 8am on a Saturday morning, but when I got out on Platform D I found three adjacent signals for track 10, 12 and 14 into SS78 FAIR ST interlocking displaying proceed indications.
