Railfanning 7-14-2011

Hi, I visited the Reading and Northern with friends Jim Kleeman and Rodney Peterson on Thursday. We had a very successful day in beautiful weather. Jim did a tremendous job of preparation bringing detailed maps and a lineup he got from a conductor he met on a previous visit.

We caught our first train, QAMC (Tomaqua to Mount Carmel turn) at about 10:40 AM just south of Ashland, PA.

We then caught it again in Gordon, where it stopped to switch a coal loader,


and an industry.



When the train continued on to Mount Carmel we broke off and went looking for a coal train, QAJE, that had 4 six axle units.

We spent about an hour looking for the loader before just settling for a grade crossing just south of Jeddo. It turns out the loader was located west of Jeddo.

It was an easy chase because the train ran at mostly 10 MPH, and never more than 25 MPH. Our next location was on the eastern outskirts of Hazelton on Norfolk Southern trackage.


We easily beat the train to the south side of Hazelton where we met a local railfan who told us there was a nice location at Lofty.

However, before we headed for Lofty we were able to get a shot at McAdoo.

The track at Lofty is former Lehigh Valley.

We broke off at Lofty and headed for Tamaqua because the Reading Turn was called for 4:00 PM. However, we heard on the radio that the QAMC (the first train we photographed) was recrewed a few miles west of Tamaqua and left Tamaqua as the reading turn without stopping. QARG is shown here passing through downtown Tamaqua,

Hecla, and

Millers Crossing Road.

At this point we could not find another location and it was almost 6:00 PM with a long drive ahead of us so we called it a day. I hope you enjoyed the photos.