18-09-01 PHOTOS: Milepost 121

As plans for the re-signaling of the PRR Main Line drew near, I realized there was some low hanging fruit, distance wise at least, that I had yet to tackle.  Therefore over Labour Day weekend I headed back up to the Harrisburg area to shoot the Milepost 121 signal bridge that served as the eastbound distant to CP-CANNON.  Unfortunately there wasn't much train action during my expedition so I fleshed out the trip with a visit to CP-ROCKVILLE and the HARRIS tower museum.  You can find all of the signal and train photos here and on Google Photos.

As I mentioned, the Milepost 121 signals are located in view of the US 15 bridge over the Juniata River north of Duncannon, PA. The PRR signal bridge dates from the 1920's or 30's while the position light signals were reconfigured in the 1980's.

CP-ROCKVILLE is located on the opposite bank of the Susquehanna River and encompasses the east end of the Rockville Bridge. The present day relay shed was built adjacent to the old PRR Rockville tower.

NS ES44AC #8008 and NS SD70ACe #1166 showed up with a westbound TOFC intermodal train.

 

Included in the mix were some potentially new intermodal container road trailers.

From there I drove to the Rockville Bridge wye crossing just in time to catch a local freight heading up the Buffalo Line with NS SD40-2's #3347 and #3423

Although this part of the junction was technically part of CP-WYE on the Buffalo Line, replacement signals were still going up. With PTC and operating practices in general there is less of an appetite to signal trains around low speed routes at junctions and the dwarfs will be replaced by high signals displaying "full" Clear. 

 Of course I couldn't resist getting a full set of photos of the CP-ROCKVILLE pedestal signal.

 Over at HARRIS tower, a cut of light engines were waiting for a signal at CP-HARRIS. 

The engines included NS C44-10Ws, #7587 and #7598, a sibling pair of elderly C40-8Ws, #8389 and #8390 and finally BNSF C44-9W #4616 to round out all three generations of GE DC powered 4000hp locomotives. The C40-8Ws in particular are getting rare on NS as they are frequently shuffled in an out of storage to meet demand surges.

Little NS GP38-2 #5612 showed up with a cut of COFC cars on a transfer move between Rutherford Yard and the Harrisburg internodal terminal.

Over at the Amtrak station a 5-car Keystone set was sitting on track #4 with ACS-86 #643 in the power position.

Well that's it for this week. I'm going old school so no video content ;-) Next time we head up to Boston via Amtrak running over the Metro North New Haven Line.