Railfanning Aprill 17, 2015

Hi, I joined friends Bill Kalkman, Jim Kleeman and Tom Bunjon for a railfan charter on the Potomac Eagle on April 18 and 19. We left home on April 17 with the intent of doing some railfanning on the way to Romney, WV, where we would spend the next two nights.

Our first stop was Brunswick, MD where we found a train of covered hoppers sitting on a siding.

As CSX seemed dead we moved on to Shenandoah Jcn., WV where we photographed the eastbound Capitol Limited.

Just before the Capitol came through NS local #V86 crossed CSX on a bridge.  While we were unable to get pictures of both #V86 and the Capitol, we caught up to #V86 at Shepardstown going into the hole for #211.

We then moved up to the Potomac River bridge to catch #211 entering into West Virginia.

From the radio we knew #211 would meet #V86 and #227 at Shepardstown so we crossed into Maryland and set up along the C&O canal for #227.

On our return to Shenandoah Jcn. we heard #38Q call an approach at Daniels, which is the south end of the siding whose north end is at the Junction.  Soon #38Q came up the siding

and stopped.

After about five minutes the signal cleared at the north end of the siding and #38Q proceeded north to Hagerstown, MD.  At this point we left and had lunch.

About 3:30 we located the power for that day's "sandman" sitting just north of the Winchester, VA city line at Stine Ave.  We got some static photos and waited for the crew to show up, which they did about 3:45. 

The first thing they did was to head north to do some switching.  First they picked up some covered hoppers just north of Stine Ave. and

pushed them north.  The crew is shown here at Cives Lane.

After dropping their cars the crew crossed Welltown Rd. on their way to Clear Brook (above and below).

Covered hoppers were picked up at Clear Brook.

A stop was made at Welltown Rd. on the return to pick up more covered hoppers (above and below).

The engineer was all business.

Finally, with the switching done the train waited on the connection to CSX for permission to get on CSX to travel through town to their line out to Gore and the sand mine.  It was at this point that we broke off the chase and headed for dinner.

Thanks for looking.