Jersey Mike's Rail Adventures: April 2015

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

15-04-28 PHOTOS: College Park

Toward the end of April, I had a two day industry meeting on the University of Maryland campus in College Park. Since driving inside the beltway is a huge "no no", I decided to dump I95 and take mass transit it from Baltimore. Since the only university served by the popular Penn Line is Bowie State, I had to get dropped off downtown at the former B&O Camden station and take a Camden Line train towards DC. Because I was looking to make the most of my time I also brought along my camera and put together a little photo set you can view here.

I was looking to catch the 6:30am departing train from Camden Sta, but I actually was dropped off early enough to catch the 6:10am train pulling away past the new dwarf stack unilens signal with MP36PH-3C #13.

Video of #13 departing and knocking down the signal.

While I waited a few MTA light rail trains passed through, including this one with #5021.

My train arrived with Cab Car #7745 on the DC end.

The trip was rather uneventful and here we see MP36PH-3C #35 pulling away from the College Park platform under full load. This is in contrast to my last Camden Line run where the new MP36PH-3C developed technical faults and had to have some traction motors cut out.

Adjacent to a DC Metro Station, the College Park MARC station consists of little more than some duckboards and some bus shelters.

Inbound DC Metro train making a stop at its own College Park station.

Here again is #7745 and my morning trainset headed towards DC again early in the evening.

Because the EMD 654F engine in the MP36PH-3C's has been Nerfed for emissions reasons, the engineers have learned to rev up the engine to notch 8 before the conductor gives the signal to depart so that the train can take off at top speed instead of needing to wait for the engine to load first. Here are some video examples of this I took over the two days.