23-10-21 PHOTOS: Lancaster Distants

With Amtrak's proposal to remove the wayside distant signals on the Harrisburg Line west of Parkesburg, I once again found myself driving around Amish country to properly document things before the ax falls. Specifically I visited three locations west of Lancaster, one in the small community of Florin. Unfortunately actually getting photos of trains did not seem to be in the cards so I proceeded on to HARRIS tower to fill out the content portfolio. You can find the full set of photos here ( mirror ).

The only Amtrak train I managed to catch out on the Main Line that day was an eastbound Keystone led by ACS-86 #616, seen here passing the milepost 70.8 intermediate signal. I was unfortunately not quick enough to get into a good position for the photo.

When Amtrak re-signaled the western end of the Harrisburg Line in the middle of the 2000's, it implemented cab signals without fixed wayside signals except on approach to interlockings. This was to support the case of speeding up traffic in the case of cab signal failure. Due to the presence of LITITZ interlocking on track #2 west of CORK interlocking in downtown Lancaster, the eastbound approach signals are offset by about a mile. Signal 708 here has a lower head to support diverging movements at CORK. For reasons unknown many of these wayside signals no longer display an Approach indication, changing from Stop and Proceed to Clear.

The track #2 signal, #718, is just visible about a mile down the tracks.

The #708 signal location is adjacent to a surprisingly intact Pier 1 Imports store. The chain closed down for good in October 2020.

Meanwhile, the #718 signal is located near the now closed Rohrerstown Rd grade crossing.

This was previously the location of the first automatic block signal location west of Lancaster, the mounts for which are still attached to the overhead catenary poles.

The Milepost 81.5 signals are the westbound distants to RHEEMS interlocking, which replaced the old FLORIN temporary block station and hand throw crossover.

These are also offset a bit due to the placement of a hand throw industrial siding. The western part of the Harrisburg Line has a robust amount of on line customers.

HARRIS tower is never lacking in rail traffic and shortly after I arrived I caught C40-10W #7563 and AC44C6M #4386 leading an eastbound intermodal train.

This was followed by a westbound trailer train with three units on the head end, C44-9W #9898 and AC44C6M's #4388 and #4092.

My first EMD unit for the day was SD70ACe #1206 running ahead of AC44C6M #4576 on a westbound stack train.

A following westbound manifest run with fairly new AC44C6M #4513 and not at all new C44-9W #9828 stopped short of CP-HARRIS and conducted a crew change. AC44C6M #4258 was providing some help at the end as distributed power.

Zooming in towards the station track I caught PRR GG1 #4859 sitting next to Veterans ACS-86 #642.

NS C44-9W #9918 and AC44C6M #4355 running lite to the Harrisburg fuel pad from Rutherford Yard.

While I was too late for westbound Pennsylvanian Train 43's arrival, I was able to catch Train 42 with P42DC #129 leading.

Final train of the day was an eastbound manifest with ES44AC #8013 and SD70ACe #1232.

That's all for now. Next time I'll be heading to Grand Central Madison via Freeport, Long Island.