Big Blue

Caught Conrail #8098 today. Fun times in the 40 degree weather with 20mph winds. Yeah.

Whoops...almost forgot.

Hello everyone!

After a very long period of absence I am back in the blog world. High school, as well as sports got in the way, and I barely had enough time to upload pictures.

Anyway, several things have happened in my period of silence.

-I have quite a few new videos on my youtube account here.
-I got a new camera, the Nikon D3100.
-I've met up with several people and seen some very interesting trains.

Here are some highlights of what you have missed:

All of these are on my RRPictureArchives account, which you can find here.

I am going to update flickr as soon as I can find the time.

Thanks for reading!

Teaming Up!

Well, yesterday I had a blast railfanning with Travis Hunt, Nate Babcock and Austin Sasse. We tore up the South Shore yards taking pictures of everything. Here are a few highlights.

Of course, as soon as I left, South Shore Freight decided to do tons of switching. Travis, Austin, and Nate all got to experience this first hand.

The Amtrak Auto Train

Well, I had a chance to go and see the auto train being put together in Sanford, Fl. It was quite an interesting experience.

The AutoTrain uses Superliner cars. Here they are parked on the platform.

These yellow ramps are used to load the cars into the Autoracks. The autoracks are then switched over to the platform.

The platform is covered and extends for a good quarter mile. The train itself is one of the longest trains amtrak runs.

I found this sticker on the side of one of the locos. It shows that 831 is a p40.

Here are the two P's that pull the autotrain. They don't allow anyone past where I am standing here.

The interior of the station is very large. It is reminiscent of an airport terminal.

I like the old school signage they use to promote the autotrain.

This is one of the locomotives they use to switch the cars around the yard. It's a Dash 8-40BWH.

Ugh

Well, I finally broke down and got a facebook. My name on facebook is Mc Trainfan.

The end.

A Bit of History

Well, being at my beach house for the week really limits the amount of railfanning I can do. Luckily, there is one place where I can have salvation: the Amtrak wolverine route. I was picking up pizza yesterday when I drove by the old NYC coal tower. I grabbed my camera and took a few photos.

Sadly, I learned that Amtrak has slated this tower for demolition. Not sure when, but it is soon. I have this really cool picture of Hiawatha cars traveling under it a few years back. Lemme find it...

There it is. Here's another pic, from a different angle. I looked at the plate, and it says that it was built by a company out of Chicago. Neat.

A New Location Appears!

Well, I was out riding today, and I found the perfect spot for railfanning. It's located at a park about a mile from my house, and it has some pretty decent views. I'll be shooting from there whenever I can.

 This is the crossing right next to the park, complete with signals.

A perfect straightaway runs the entire length of the park. Awesome, right?