Railfanning 6-10 and 6-11-2010

Hi, I spent the afternoon of Thursday, 6-10 and the morning of Friday 6-11 showing friend Dale Diacont some of the places I consider most interesting along the Northeast Corridor. Mutual friend Doug Koontz joined us on Thursday. I met Doug at St. Dennis, MD where I photographed Q216 before he arrived.

Doug and I stopped at Halethorpe on the Corridor where we found a tie train sitting with a GP38H-3 on the point. We believe this is a former GO Transit GP40TC. Shown are 2 of the trains we photographed passing the tie train. MARC had 2 of its new MP36s running on its Penn Line route on Thursday.


After lunch we picked up Dale at the BWI Airport station where he arrived on Amtrak's new train from Lynchburg. We headed for Havre de Grace where we spent most of the afternoon. Our first photo location was on the down river side of the bridge where we located in an apartment complex. Amtrak and Marc provided a variety of trains including Acelas,

A MARC MP36 which would terminate on the east side of the river at Perryville and then, after about a 20 minute layover, head back to DC,


and a Northeast Regional train with an HHP-8.



When the sun became aligned with the bridge axis, about 3:00 PM, we decided to head for the west end of the bridge across Bush River. After shooting a few trains here,

including the southbound Crescent,

we returned to Havre de Grace, this time on the upstream side of the bridge. Shown below is the southbound Silver Meteor.

An eastbound MARC train with and HHP-8 is pushing its train westbound after a short layover in Perryville.


For our last shots Dale and I crossed the Susquehanna River and shot one Acela at Perryville.

Note the fencing next to the tower. Amtrak has put fencing up on both ends of the tower and now it is difficult to find a place to stand in the morning for photography of trains passing the station.
Dale likes signal bridges so this day was given over to photographing them. Dale spent the night at my house and we left early in the morning for Bowie. Again, Amtrak and Marc provide a number of trains for our entertainment.




We then moved south to the MARC station at Seabrook, MD.


After shooting a MARC commuter train headed for Baltimore we returned to Bowie for a second photograph of the train.

Dale got one last shot at Bowie State University MARC stop while I was driving around looking for a parking spot. As it was getting close to lunch time we headed for Baltimore where we had great sandwiches at a New York Jewish style deli called Attmans. I then left Dale off at his hotel.

It was great showing Dale some of the corridor and I look forward to doing it again in the near future. I hope you enjoyed the photos.