23-06-29 PHOTOS: South Hills Jct

During some recent trips through Pittsburgh I have had the opportunity to revisit the Port Authority Transit light rail that runs southward from the downtown triangle. In 2022 I made my first trip out to South Hills Village, with intermediate stops at Washington and Overbrook Junctions. For this year, while the 47L out to Library seemed tempting, the hour long trip time in each direction would exceed my time budget so I looked for something a bit closer to downtown. The obvious answer was to spend some time at South Hills Junction, located on the other side of the Mt Washington Transit Tunnel. So while I didn't go very far in distance I was able to explore one of the most interesting and iconic parts of the system. You can find the full gallery here ( mirror ).

As my visit involved an overnight stay I got this night photo of Pittsburgh Penn Station shrouded in the haze of wildfire spoke that had blown down from Canada. This haze would continue to impact my photos on the following morning's trip.

Heading out to South Hills Jct I pass Siemens SD-400 #4247 at the First Ave station. First Ave was built as an infill station to serve the south side of downtown which had seen increased development since the downtown light rail tunnel was opened in the mid 1980's. Part of this development was on the former site of the B&O Railroad station. First Ave also marks the boundary of the fare free downtown transit zone.

CAF LRV #4313 pulls out of South Hills Jct on a 42S Beechview Line run to South Hills Village. It is at this point where trains bound for the Overbrook line take the right hand diverging route onto the flyover.

PAT operates two batches of equipment, 55 SD-400 LRV's that entered service in 1985 and another 38 CAF SD-400 copies that came on board in 2003 for the restoration of the Overbrook Line. Apart from the numbers, the easiest way to tell the two classes apart is the design and placement of the center mounted headlamp. Below we see CAF LRV #4309 and SD-400 LRV's #4204 and #4230 departing South Hills Junction station towards Pittsburgh.

A week before my visit, Pittsburgh had hosted the American Public Transport Association (APTA) conference and had wrapped SD-400 #4202 for the occasion.

The Junction in "South Hills Junction" comes in the form of a double scissors crossover that connects on one side the Overbrook and Beechview Lines with the Allentown Line and Mt. Washington Tunnel on the other.

When built the service patterns made full use of the junction, but today it is essentially straight railed between the Mt Washington tunnel and the high level Beechview Line platforms as seen here with CAF LRV #4326.

Although a tower-like building is present, it is not clear if it is, or ever was, staffed for the purpose of routing trains through the junction. This is because the light rail system is equipped with automatic route setting transponders as seen under #4207. After LRV's berth at the platform, the route is lined and a Restricting signal displayed on the attendant dwarf signal.

The seemingly abandoned low level platforms at South Hills Jct are a remnant of the original Route 47 Overbrook line that bypassed the extensive street running on the 42 Beechview Line with a dedicated right of way that ran direct to Overbrook Junction. Modernization of the Overbrook line was deferred due to the cost of replacing large segments of single track and several rickety wooden trestles that could only support the weight of PCC cars. Routes 47 service was abruptly suspended in 1993 when the condition of the trestles became a safety hazard with rebuilt efforts beginning in 1999 and finishing in 2004. The "modern" LRV quality line would split/join with the Beechview via a brand new flying junction south of rebuilt high level platforms. The low level platforms would continue to see use as the terminal of the 52 Allentown, until that service was indefinitely suspended in 2011 due to recession era austerity cuts.

23-06-19a PHOTOS: Hoboken Terminal and Tonnelle Ave

Here is part 2 of my June 2023 combined NJT M&E / light rail trip. In part 1 I covered a round trip on the Newark City Subway, continuation to Newark Broad St and then stops at Denville and Summit before ultimately arriving at Hoboken Terminal. In part 2 I'll cover Hoboken Terminal before heading out to Tonnelle Ave on the HLBR. The full set of photos can be found here ( mirror ), just scroll down to see those photos covered in this section.

Upon arrival at Hoboken I encountered Arrow III MU #1314. Despite the M&E being largely electrified, MU's are only used on a few services such as the stop intensive Gladstone Branch locals.

Other equipment hanging out near the buffers included Comet V cab car #6063, #6035 and #6055, along with and split level cab car #7062 and Metro North Comet V cab car #6712 next to NJT Comet V cab car #6040.

Class leading NJT Comet V cab car #6000 could be found adjacent to the new track #5 end buffer that replaced a 1907 vintage buffer that was run through by a slow moving NJT train in 2016. The placement of the new stop mechanism cost about half a carlength of capacity.

The station interior was as gorgeous as ever.

The area outside the official main entrance has been named the George Warrington plaza.

NJT also installed this digital chart to cover all of the strange service patterns.

On the southern expansion platforms I found split level cab cars #7053 and #7037 along with a Metro North Comet V cab on storage track #19.

22-07-01 PHOTOS: South Hills Village

Despite all the times I visit Pittsburgh, until 2022 I had yet to ride all of its light rail system. Built before World War 2 to support its vast streetcar network, the Pittsburgh LightRail system consists of two main routes that head south of the city using the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel. The 42 is mostly surface running along Broadway Ave in Beechview and Dormont. The other route, 47, was half rebuilt as a "modern" light rail line in the 1990's, largely replacing the last of the PCC's, with the outer half retaining its PCC era configuration to this day. I had ridden both these trunk lines, as well as the now discontinued 52, around 2010. However due to the quirks of the old school Allegheny County Port Authority Transit (PAT) fare system, I never rode the short bit of the 42 between Washington Junction, where the 47L splits off to Library, and South Hill Village. A decade of time and one updated fare system later I found myself back in Pittsburgh without any railroad signaling related missions on my plate so it was finally time to complete the Pittsburgh Light Rail system by going to South Hills Village. You can find the full gallery here ( mirror ).

My journey begins at Wood St station in Pittsburgh's Light Rail Subway that runs from the north side of the Allegheny River and through downtown. Here a Siemens SD400 type LRV passes through the crossover south of the station. My outbound trip would be provided by LRV #4327.

In the mid-1980's PAT made use of the old PRR Panhandle Route west of Pennsylvania Station to replace its downtown street trackage with a trolley tunnel. The Panhandle Route connected Pittsburgh to Chicago via Columbus and Logansport as opposed to the northerly route via Fort Wayne and exited Penn Station via a tunnel under downtown that would form the nucleus of the current PAT light rail subway. Here we see PAT LRV #4325 on a 47L routing heading inbound at the 1st Ave station. 1st Ave was an infill station built in the early 2000's to in part serve the redeveloped footprint of the former B&O a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Street_Station">Grant Street Station.

The Panhandle Bridge was built for the PRR's Panhandle Route and could support all manner of heavy main line railroad trains. Today the steel truss bridge is barely breaking a sweat with the LRV's that now cross it. Reuse of the disused railroad infrastructure allowed the Smithfield St Bridge used by the PCC's exiting the transit tunnel, to be rebuilt in 1994-95.

PAT Siemens SD400 LRV #4249 at Station Square. PAT received two batches of SD400 pattern high floor LRV's. The first 55 were built by Siemens in the mid-80's to go along with the downtown tunnel project. A second order of 28, numbered in the 4300 series, was built under license by CAF in 2003-4. Travel in the downtown part of the system was historically free with Station Square being the first point that would trigger a fare. This arrangement made trains pay as you enter towards downtown and pay as you exit heading away from downtown.

The Mount Washington Transit Tunnel, along with the large amount of dedicated right of way, is what prevented full bustitution of the Pittsburgh light rail system. Built in 1902, the 3,500 foot tunnel was necessary to get streetcars past the imposing Mouth Washington on the south bank of the Monongahela River. The southern end of the tunnel empties out into South Hills Jct where the routes 42, 47 and 52 all meet.



Also known as the Overbrook Line, the Route 47 ran on a dedicated right of way between South Hills Jct and Overbrook Jct. Although it was a completely dedicated right of way, it was built to classic streetcar/interurban standards with a single track, short passing sidings and wooden trestles over the rivers and roads of the valley. Not rebuilt in the first wave that brought in the LRV's, the 47 saw PCC operation until 1993 when the shut the whole thing down due to poor structural integrity of the trestles. The line would not reopen until 2004 having been completely rebuilt to modern light rail standards with cab signaling, double track and full high level boarding. Below is Boggs station, just past the point where new flyover ramps were built to join the Route 42, replacing the original alignment that used the at-grade crossovers at South Hills Jct.

CAF built SD400 #4301 near Boggs. The 2004 28 car supplementary order was to ultimately replace the Overbrook Line PCCs that were retired without replacement in 1993.

SD400 #4252 near Killarney. Despite being modern, the new Route 47 has little of the charm of the classic Route 47.

Overbrook Jct is where the Routes 42 and 47 merge into a single trunk line. Between 1993 and 2004 all light rail traffic would diverge to the left down the Route 42.

22-05-26 PHOTOS: Brockway

In the early 1990's there was a minor monorail resurgence in the United States with 4 similar systems being sold to the cities of Brockway, Ogdenville, North Haverbrook and Springfield. While the systems in Ogdenville and Springfield were later shut down, I had had no information regarding fate of the Brockway Monorail and therefore I decided to visit over Memorial Day weekend in 2022 to see what I could find. Brockway is located a few miles off I-80 north of Du Bois, PA and, in addition to the monorail, it features the Buffalo and Pittsburgh main line running through town. The full set of photos, which include additional content from Hancock, MD and Clarion, PA, can be found here ( mirror ).

The trip out to Brockway from the east coast involves I-70 to the PA Turnpike to I-99. I try to time travel using this route so that I will pass by Hancock, WV just in time to catch Amtrak Train 30, the eastbound Capitol Limited. This day I was a few minutes early and managed to snag a surprising amount of CSX action. First up was a westbound manifest freight led by NINE(!) locomotives. The first three were ES44AC's #986, #860 and #3020

These were followed by SD70MACe #4558, one of 7 CSX SD70MAC's that have been so far rebuilt with new AC electronics and a power bump from 4000hp to 4500hp.

Behind them were three "YN" painted C40-9W's, #9012, #9016 and #9019, in tow as part of their reactivation process due to increased traffic levels. The 9000-series C40-9W's are interesting as the 50-strong order was GE's first of the Dash-9 era and had some early installment weirdness including Dash-8 trucks.

Two additional locomotives were behind the C40-9W's, C40-10W #5328 and GP40-3 #6561.

The manifest freight proceeded to pass by a local job waiting to head east with GP40-2 #6483 leading.

Instead of getting a signal, a different local freight with 3 locomotives and 4 cars proceeded west under HANCOCK interlocking's eastbound signal bridge. the units included GP40-2 #6445, GP38-2 #2742 and GP38-3 #2059.

The main attraction soon arrived with Amtrak P42DC #71 pulling a 6 car Train 30 all by itself.

22-02-19 PHOTOS: MBTA Trolleybuses

In February 2022 I was able to able to ride most of the MBTA's Cambridge trolleybus network for the first, and unfortunately last time as it was shut down and scrapped about two weeks after my visit. I was actually quite lucky as the shutdown lined up with my annual late winter trip to the Boston area via Amtrak's NEC that provides the opportunity to utilize any remaining discount and upgrade coupons. The full set of photos ( mirror ) includes both legs of the NEC round trip as well as use of Boston's subway network to reach the trolleybus terminal at Harvard Square.

Although my trip began at Amtrak's BWI Airport Rail Station, I was not catching my Acela Express train from there, even though I arrived in time to see #2029 departing northward. The 10am departure from Washington offered a better price point as well as the ability to ride the entire NEC instead of just most of it. Instead I boarded MARC cab car #7851 in the opposite wirection to begin my trip.

My Acela trainset had power car #2012 on the rear seen here at the typical AX departure platform at Union Station.

K TOWER hanging on, LANDOVER looking sad and ZOO with new windows and a PRR keystone.

One of the nice parts of taking the Acela is no Trenton stop!



At at Manhattan Transfer my Acela was routed on the less frequently used track #1 due to Amtrak ACS-86 #667 being stopped on track #3 while a conductor fouls track #2 to carry out a hotbox inspection on an Amfleet.

A PATH train passing HUDSON tower en-route to Newark.

#2012 at New York Penn during the extended station stop.

P42DCs #106 and #99 leading the Lake Shore Limited at Boston Back Bay.

The next morning I was heading to Harvard Square via Green Line Type 8 trolley #3889 and 1800 series Red Line car #1840.

Although greater Boston once featured quite an extensive trolleybus system, all but 3 routes were shut down by 1963. Those that remained were saved due to the construction of an underground transit tunnel in Harvard Square in 1958 where the exhaust from diesel buses would present a hazzard in the confined space.

Unfortunately both the Routes 71 and 73 had been bustituted that morning due to a problem with the overhead wires. The MBTA was never a fan of the operational complexities of trolleybus operation and the wealthy residents of Cambridge were increasingly hostile to the "unsightly" overhead wires. By 2022 the need to invest in both the overhead power system and new vehicles gave the T an opening to bustitute the entire operation.