Railfanning 11-28-2017

Hi, Friend Dale Jacobson and I spent some time last Tuesday railfanning in the Baltimore area.

While I waited for Dale to arrive at our meeting place, the St. Dennis MARC station, I was able to photograph the last commuter train of the morning.

We were curious as to what was happening at Sparrows Point now that the former steel mill there was being replaced by a logistics park. In particular we wanted to see what Tradepoint Rail, the successor to the Patapsco and Back River RR, was up to. We found one of their SW1500s working the area off Grays Rd north of Grays Yard (above and below).

After finishing along Grays Road the crew went back to Grays Yard and picked up six more cars for spotting. We caught the train off the Wharf Road overpass (above and two below). At this point the locomotive and crew disappeared into a part of the park closed to the public so we left.

After lunch we staked out the CSX bridge between Havre de Grace and Perryville. The spot we chose, under the US 40 bridge, gave us a good view of the CSX bridge and a back lit view of the Amtrak bridge. This is how a correctly exposed photograph would look

While we waited we had some barge traffic for entertainment. The tow boat on the far left actually is not tethered to a barge but will pick up an empty out in the bay just beyond the Amtrak bridge.

I actually envisioned the scene with the Amtrak bridge as a silhouette, sort of like this.

Then I thought why not play with the color balance of the shot to warm things up.

Finally, about 2 hours after we got here CSX sent a north bound across their bridge. We never did see a south bound, which we had hoped to get here.

Our last train of the day was of the afternoon MARC train pushing from Perryville toward Washington, DC.

Thanks for looking/