20-11-21 PHOTOS: VALLEY JCT

Once again it's time for a trip to Reading Country and with most of the surviving Conrail signals already accounted for my goals for 2020 were to check out the surviving Reading interlocking tower at Lebanon Valley Junction along with the new/rebuilt NS Harrisburg Line interlockings CP-LORANE and CP-BIRD. This trip also afforded me my first shot at the popular railfanning location of Wyomissing Jct as well as some other Reading area points of interest. The full set of photos can be found here ( mirror ).

My trip started out well enough when upon leaving the Maryland area I caught the head end of an eastbound CSX intermodal train passing over US Route 1. Swinging onto local roads I was just in time to catch distributed power in the form of ES44AC #936 passing through the site of the old Elkridge MARC station.

I met up with Reading area guru Kevin Painter at the Reading and Northern North Reading station. Although nothing was moving from an R&N point of view, an odd couple pairing of yard power featuring SW8 #802 and MP15DC #1548 was hanging out along with SD40-2 #3055 and SD50-2 #5018 in the new Fast Freight scheme.

Heading to Wyomissing Jct we passed by CP-BELT where an eastbound NS manifest train was waiting on a signal on the old Reading Belt Line with NS C40-10W #7523 and Ac44C6M #4331 on the head end.

Upon reviewing a clear signal indication, the train started east with C40-10W #7550 providing some mid-train assistance.

After that it was on to CP-WYOMISSING where the Reading Diamond was still present on the now out of service 1960's vintage relay hut.

There is a reason this location is popular with the railfans as it sees upwards of 50 movements per day as trains to/from both Philadelphia and New York converge here. We were not disappointed as a westbound manifest train rolled out of town on Harrisburg Line Track #2 with NS SD70ACe's #1087 and #1145 leading along with AC44C6M #4206 arranged in an elephant style configuration.

This was followed by a doublestack intermodal train coming up the ramp from the NS Reading Line to New York, which followed the slow manifest train west on track #2. This train had the inverse consist with AC44C6M's #4230 and #4194 leading with SD70ACe #1152 in the first position.

With no additional trains in the picture, Kevin and I moved to VALLEY JCT tower, which is located at the point where the old Reading Lebanon Valley branch crosses over the Reading Belt Line. The tower was built in the 1950's as part of Reading aggressive embrace of technology to reduce operating costs as anthracite coal traffic decreased. The tower was part of a CTC project that encompassed the Belt Line, Belt Junction, Valley Junction and Wyomissing Jct. Although the tower looks small from this angle, it is actually a 3-story affair that descends down to the Belt Line below.

Next on the itinerary was CP-LORANE, that replaced CP-TITUS a few years ago as the TITUS location was on a curve required an expensive movable point diamond. CP-LORANE is a basic crossover located about 2 miles south of the old TITUS location. What used to be track #2 to the north now leads to the Reading Belt Line with milepost prefix AF. A Limited Clear indication on the westbound track #2 signal predicted the arrival of a movement, which dutifully arrived in the form of a short local freight bound for Reading Yard with GP38-2 #5607 leading and #5265 on the rear.

Last stop was Birdsboro, PA which is located at the northern end of the largely defunct Wilmington and Northern branch and the southern end of what is today known as the Turkey Path, a third Harrisburg Line main track on the western bank of the Schuylkill River that made up the southern end of the Reading Belt Line that bypassed the congested yard and station areas in town. The W&N and Turkey Path were connected to the Main Line via a concrete arch bridge with the junction controlled from the 1925 vintage BIRD tower on the western bank. The tower was closed in 1964 and served as a CTC relay hut until it was demolished around 2010.

For many years, BIRD interlocking existed as a single switch for southbound trains to access Harrisburg Line track #2. Because the Harrisburg Line between Reading and Valley Forge was operated under single direction Rule 251 ABS rules, there was no real use for an interlocked crossover at BIRD. When the line was changed to bi-directional CTC in the 2018 time frame, a trailing crossover was installed at CP-BIRD to allow Turkey Path access to/from either track. A three-track cantilever was added in the eastbound direction to support this.

The BIRD singe was apt that day because a pair of bald eagles were flying around the general area. I was not sure if they were migrating or resident, as November and December are peak times for band eagle migration, however they provided me with a extended photographic opportunity. 20 years ago bald eagle sightings in the Delaware Valley area would make local news. Today, thanks to environmental protections, I can almost expect to see one if I am railfanning near any major waterway in Pennsylvania.

The extended portion of BIRD interlocking on the western side of the river was complicated by the presence of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Schuylkill Valley Branch, that crossed the Wilmington and Northern and interchanged with the Reading at the jointly operated BROOKE tower. Today the right of eay has just a few storage tracks for stone trains from area quarries, one of of which is Amtrak's preferred supplier for NEC ballast.

The Schuylkill Valley Branch was eventually abandoned after the Conrail merger and now exists largely as a bike trail, although some evidence of the PRR still exists in Birdsboro in the form of the old passenger and freight stations.

Well that's all I have. Next week I'll be getting into the Thanksgiving spirit with some holiday adjacent railfanning at North Philadelphia and Croydon.