Raifanning 7-12-2018

Hi, On Thursday, July 12, friend Dale Jacobson and I spent the day railfanning together. It was a slow morning and early afternoon. We lost a 1/2 hour in traffic due to a bad accident on our way to Hagerstown, MD.

As we were making our way to the Vardo Yard office Dale spotted what he thought was a blue unit. It turned out to be the Conrail Heritage unit switching (above and below).

The Yardmaster told him that #211 was due out at 11:30 AM and that Winchester and Western would not arrive until after 4:00 PM, so we headed into town to search for a spot to shoot the 211 north of the yard. As we had talked to an NS policeman at Vardo we felt constrained and could not find an open spot. Time was getting short so we drove south of Hagerstown to the crossing at St. James, MD. No. 211 actually showed up at 12:33 PM; running 45 to 50 minutes later than expected.

At this point we decided to try our luck with the W&W. If it was going to get to Hagerstown by four it might me already out of their yard at Inwood, switching somewhere. We checked out the line as we moved south; in particular sidings and the CSX interchange in Martinsburg, WV. Nothing. When we got to Inwood three GP38s were tied up and nobody was around. We made a stop at McDonalds and when we returned nothing had changed so we decided to start east stopping at Shenandoah Junction, WV.

After awhile we could hear Q217 on the radio and we decided to move west on railroad crossing to get better light. We just made it (above and below). It was 3:23 PM. Things would now improve as Point of Rocks, MD would be our final location of the day.

First up at Point of Rocks was MARC #873 seen here approaching the station.

While driving over here we heard the dispatcher and the crew of a work train talking about turning equipment on the wye at Point of Rocks. It turned out to be an FRA inspection train seen arriving and

going away on #1 track..

The work train waited out of sight for MARC #891 to take the connection from the Metropolitan Sub to the Old Main Line Sub and continue to Frederick, MD.

Then the work train crossed over, backed on to the connection and

backed off the connection onto #3 track of the Old Main Line Sub.

While all this was going on Amtrak #29 went through.

Back to the FRA train: It exited the connection from the Metropolitan sub, pulled forward on #3 track and

cut off the locomotive. The locomotive then pulled forward and proceeded to turn on the wye.

While the locomotive turned on the wye E791 (coal empties) came through on track # 3 (above and below) and

passed the station while MARC #875 was unloading.

After coupling up to the two FRA cars the locomotive spotted the entire train on a siding for the night.

Our day concluded with Q416 and

MARC #877 with a brand new Siemens SC-44 Charger for power. Thanks for looking.

Railfanning 6-22-2018

Hi, Even though the weather looked awful when Dale and I left Wilmington, DE on Friday morning for the Delmarva Peninsular being the intrpeid railfans that we are we carried on. Information we obtained the previous afternoon from the Maryland & Delaware indicated a crew would be on duty about 7:00 AM in Massey, MD and would leave for Townsend, DE (the interchange for this part of the MDE with the Delmarva Central) around 7:45 AM. However, as we approached Massey at about 7:30 AM Dale spotted the crew heading east light engine.

We caught the locomotive at Grears Corner Road near Townsend.

While the crew picked up six tank cars in Townsend we looked for a spot to photograph the train and decided to return to Grears Corner Road.

Next up was Golts, MD.

At Massey we paused to photograph a former Conrail SW-7 and a rebuilt RS-3 sitting dead

and then moved west of town. The train, when it arrived, now had three different tank cars.

We continued following the train photographing it at Lambson Forest Rd.,

Kennedyville,

East of Lynch,

and Lynch.

On arrival in Worton, MD the crew spent a little more than an hour switching the Eastman Chemical facility there. The photo above shows the train leaving Worton for Massey. At this point we headed for Dover, and lunch with Dale's friend Brian Jenkins and his family. Brian would be the engineer on the Delmarva Central's local DO1 that afternoon.

Here's Brian in the cab of one of the two locomotives assigned to DO1 doing some switching.

More views of the switching in the small yard in Dover before beginning to service industries (above and below).

After working at Kraft Foods, next to the Dover Yard, the crew headed for a Propane dealer in Cheswold, DE where we were waiting to photograph the switching operation (above and three below) as the crew picked up and spotted cars/

We then moved about a 1/2 mile further along the line toward Clayton to photograph the train one last time coming and

going. Thanks for looking.