Railfanning 1-20 and 21-2014

Hi, January 20 was the beginning of a 5 day railfan trip with friends Dale Diacont and Stan Short.  I left home a few minutes after 7 AM and, because it was MLK's birthday, I had an easy trip to Stan's house in Fredericksburg, VA, arriving about 8:15.

 

Stan and I loaded up his truck and headed out to see what we could find to shoot, planning to end our day at Dale's home in Waynesboro, VA.  After checking out Orange, VA and neither seeing any trains nor hearing anything on the radio we decided to move on to Charlottesville.  We arrived just as the Amtrak train from Lynchburg was making its station stop.  After about 40 minutes this southbound rolled through the station area.  There is a nice signal bridge just north of where the photo was taken but we did not have enough warning to walk up there.

After shooting the NS train we decided to look for a shot on the Buckingham Branch (former C&O Mountain Sub) as we heard the dispatcher talk to an empty coal train coming west.  We elected to wait for the train at Crozet, VA.

We beat the train to Afton for another shot.

We decided to try for one last photo at Staunton and went to the station.  There is a foot bridge over the track there and we waited for easily 20 minutes before deciding we had missed the train or that something had gone wrong.  As we reached Stan's truck the coal empties rumbled through the station.

Having missed the coal empties we then checked out the Shenandoah Valley.  We caught their train just north of town.

They leave their train about 1/4 mile north of their small yard for the Buckingham Branch to pick up.

Before ending our day at Dale's we got one last photograph.  This freight is southbound on the Valley Line in Waynesboro - probably 37Q.

When we left Dale's on Tuesday we followed the NS Valley Line to Roanoke and then the Pumpkin Vine to Winston Salem, NC.  The only train we saw was a local backing into the yard in Roanoke.  We did however stumble upon this old gas station which is now an antique shop.

In my next post I'll cover our photography on the Alexander RR in North Carolina.  Thanks for looking.