Railfanning - F unit weekend, Part 1

Hi, Friend Jim Kleeman and I had an F unit weekend from June 3 to June 5, 2011. Our railfanning began at Port Royal PA where we set up to photograph an eastbound NS Office Car Special. However, our first train was an eastbound manifest.

The OCS was a few minutes behind the manifest.

We gave chase and were able to photograph the train at Cove,

at Marysville,

and again on the Rockville Bridge.

While crews changed in Harrisburg we went to the south end of the former Reading bridge across the Susquehanna River.

At this point we let the train go and headed north. Checking out the Reading and Northern seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, we could not seem to locate a train until about 4:00 PM. We could hear 3 trains but could not find them until the train shown below left Tamaqua and headed for Port Clinton. We had sought information at Port Clinton earlier but the receptionist refused to bother the dispatcher.

We were able to beat the train to New Ringgold but could not get into position for another shot, thus ending our day.

Saturday dawned cloudy and did not improve until the very end of the day. Our first stop was at Tower 6o in Scranton to try and get some information from the Delaware Lackawanna dispatcher. Unlike previous visits there was a traffic cone across the stairwell and a 2 x 4 wedged between the railings. So we headed for the shop to see if we could obtain some info there. While there we photographed the power sitting out and learned there would be only one job working that day. It would work only locally and had a unit in dip red paint with no markings.


We had learned from another fan the previous day that there would be a CP train heading north with ICE/DME power so we decided to look for it. We eventually found an intermodal train with an ICE/DME leader and a Soo SD60 in candy apple red trailing making a pickup at the north end of Taylor Yard. So we headed out to Nicholson, PA to get a shot on Tunkhannock Viaduct.

Well, we waited about 3 hours before giving up. We had talked to some locals who had been walking the track and they never saw a train. After lunch in Nicholson we headed back to Scranton where we encountered a manifest heading north. We turned around and raced back to the viaduct, beating the train by about 5 minutes.


We then chased the train getting shots along US 11,

south of New Milford, and

north of New Milford.

Shortly after we took the photo above the train went into a siding and the crew was relieved. As we were very close to Binghamton at this point we decided to look around there. A couple of former TP&W GP20s were in the Susquehanna yard along with 2 of their 3 SD70s and some other units.

At the south end of CP's Conklin Yard an incoming train was yarding its cars while an outbound with an ICE/DME SD40 sat awaiting departure.

The second and final installment will cover the first runs of the F3s owned by the Anthracite Railroad Historical Society and the Tri State Chapter of the NRHS that have just been repainted into the Delaware Lackawanna and Western freight scheme and the ARHS RS-3 in CNJ.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for looking.