11-09-05 PHOTOS: Search for the Silverliner II's

After returning from Boston I reserved a Saturday to help Phil scout some locations for his Silverliner II 16mm film. We were hoping to spot some II's in action, but as it was a weekend we would be lucky enough to see SEPTA trains at all let alone the old stuff. Like I said the primary goal was scouting out some locations that Phil would need in his film and once found he could come back on a weekday and stake them out for II trainsets.

Specifically we were looking for a station next to a grade crossing with good sight lines. By the end of the day we ended up making stops at Prospect Park, Secane, Morton, Primos, North Wales, Lansdale and Warminster. You can see the entire set of photos including all of those locations here.

We begin at the SEPTA Prospect Park station where we just stayed long enough for a double headed northbound Regional train to round the curve and pass under the 94 automatic signal.

Next up was Secane where we caught a single Silverliner IV pait with #444 and 443 heading westbound.

 Next up was Primos where the old low level station was being upgraded with high level platforms.

 I also had a chance to document the 82 automatic signals which are the westbound distants to CANE interlocking.  Note the Reading RR style lower heads.

 Next up was the Morton station which features a station building which is quite an upgrade from Primos' trailer.

Morton features the westbound 101 automatic distant signals to CANE interlocking which we see Silverliner IV #443 splitting as it returns from Elwyn.

Also at Morton we have one of two classic PRR substations on the line, still equipped with its original 1930's hardware. The 132kv 25Hz power is provided by Amtrak, but SEPTA is responsible for maintaining the overhead wires and substations.

11-09-01 PHOTOS: Boston Blue Line

Ever since the new Siemens Blue Line cars arrived a few years ago I have been trying to get out and ride them for more than a stop or two downtown. Well this year on a trip up to New Hampshire I had some extra time making my connection between North and South stations and so I decided to head out on a trip to Reveah Beach (as I wasn't sure if Wonderland still dumped outbound riders outside of fare control. Anyway, after that I caught an MBTA train up to Haverhill to visit my friend up at Portsmouth, NH and later returned to Boston via a Downeaster which gave me an additional opportunity to take some photos at North Station.

This trip took place only a few days after Hurricane Irene flooded out the NEC at Trenton so I have some photos of what that looked like only hours after service was restored. Like always you can find the full set of photos located here.

For all of you who remember, SEPTA made the mistake of leaving some equipment at the Trenton Station where it proceeded to get flooded out by several feet of water. Managers at SEPTA claimed not to be able to have predicted that the flooding would have taken place, but as you can see by the spray painted markings on the retaining wall they had two previous instances of flooding to learn from, one in 1975 and Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Fortunately FAIR interlocking is still equipped with pneumatic point machines which can be quickly brought back to service following a flood.

Here we see the stranded SEPTA Bomber set with AEM-7 #2005 after their good soaking. The good news was that the loss of this equipment prolonged the life of many Silverliner II and III sets.

C&S workers were inside FAIR interlocking mucking it out.

Moving on to New Haven we find Amtrak P40 #843 now in Shore Line East service.

In a bit of irony the old Penn Central branding is slowly returning to the New Haven Wheel Mill as the paint used to blank out the PC bits is fading faster than the PC paint it was meant to cover up.

Getting off the Regional train at South Station we find HHP-8 #664 standing along side MBB cab car #1507.

I found it rather hard to take pictures outbound on the Blue Line due to a stretcher blocking the view out the front second level railfan windows, however once at Reveah Beach there were no such restrictions. Here we see 0737 arriving with an inbound train.

#0768 was bringing up the rear of the same train.