This week fall colors are peaking in Pennsylvania, so I took a trip to the Altoona area.
First stop was Cresson to catch Amtrak No. 42, the Pennsylvanian. I got this train but clouds did not cooperate.
Norfolk Southern then sent a couple trains. one uphill and one downhill, and the sun did come out for these. Also, a familiar face showed up. Roger Durfee was also up for the weekend.
Here are some of those pictures. Enjoy
Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon
I was looking in my slide collection earlier this week with an emphasis on images made on the Cleveland Line of Norfolk Southern in the vicinity of Brady Lake and Ravenna when I ran across the image shown above.
Seeing it brought back a lot of memories of a late October day, Oct. 28, 2005, to be exact.
I was in my first year as president of the Akron Railroad Club. It was a Friday and the October meeting was that night in the Carriage House of the Summit County Historical Society.
Before the meeting Ed Ribinskas and I got in some late day railfanning around Ravenna.
As you can see in this image the fall foliage along the Cleveland Line east of Lake Street was at peak color although some of the trees had already lost most or all of their leaves.
We were there in late afternoon and fortunate to get two westbounds before the shadows completely covered the rails.
As it was, the shadows were rapidly moving in, which turned out to be a good thing by creating some dramatic contrast. Contrast helps to give an image visual tension, which increases its drama and interest.
It is noteworthy that as dramatic as these images are they are not the photographs I remember the most from this outing.
Those images were made several minutes later on the CSX New Castle Subdivision at Chestnut Street.
In the last direct sunlight of the day we caught a westbound with a BNSF leader. I framed it with a Baltimore & Ohio color position light signal and the block sign denoting the end and beginning of the Kent and Rave blocks.
The warm light on a BNSF “pumpkin” was, I thought at the time, the catch of the day.
CSX has long since dropped the use of blocks on the New Castle Sub and the CPLs have been gone for years. So those photos now make nice period pieces.
Curious as to who had the program that night I dug out the October 2005 Bulletin. The program was titled Now and Then with the “now” being presented by Marty Surdyk and the “then” being shown by his father, the late William Surdyk.
The photographs shown were made roughly 40 years apart and used different types of slide film.
Marty’s images were 35 mm slides shown in a Kodak Carousel projector.
He featured the Bessemer & Lake Erie, CSX in the Akron area, Marion, Berea and the Wheeling & Lake Erie around Spencer.
Bill’s images were 2.25-inch format slides shown in a 1950s era Goldie projector that could be fed one slide at a time. In Bill’s show were images from Berea, Marion and Akron among other locations.
The meeting minutes for October reported that a record 18 members went to the Eat ‘n Park in Cuyahoga Falls after the meeting for dessert, a late dinner or an early breakfast.
The next day ARRC members gathered again, this time in Berea to dedicate the Dave McKay memorial.
A week before the meeting, ARRC members had enjoyed an excursion on the Ohio Central between Dennison and Morgan Run. It was supposed to have been pulled by 2-8-0 Baldwin-built No. 33.
But the steamer was sidelined with mechanical issues. Instead, a Montreal Locomotive Works RS18 pulled the trip to Morgan Run while an OC FP7 powered the return trip.
What a month October 2005 was for the ARRC.
It was just coincidence that the first two Canadian National trains I saw while railfanning the Champaign Subdivision on Nov. 7 were led by Union Pacific motive power. UP units are, in my experience, not unusual on this stretch of CN although I don’t see them during every visit to the former Illinois Central mainline.
In train in the top image was following Amtrak’s southbound Saluki. The train in the bottom image was the first train I photographed on this outing. In both instance a tree next to the tracks made a handy way to work some fall color into the images.
The top image was made on the west side of the tracks and the bottom photograph on the east side in Pesotum, Illinois.
My day of railfanning in east central Illinois was winding down as I drove north on Interstate 57.
As I crossed the Canadian National tracks at Pesotum I looked to the north and saw a headlight of a southbound in the distance on the former Illinois Central mainline.
There was time for one more train. I got off the interstate and drove into town, parking next to a former IC passenger station in a park that is bisected by the CN Champaign Subdivision.
There was still some fall color left, although much of it was muted. Still, that color combined with the fallen leaves gave the appearance of autumn.
Being late afternoon, the some sunlight was being blocked by a line of trees on the west side of the track that resulted in shadows being cast over the rails.
Yet the resulting shadows in their own way showed that it was late day and created visual tension in the scene.
The image above showed the most sunlight on the nose of the lead CN locomotive.
The muted colors, the light and shadows, the leaves on the ground all combine to say “it looks like fall.”
Had this been my last image of the day I would have been quite pleased with it.
But it would turn out that I still had one more train to catch and it would yield what might have been my favorite photograph of a day that had been, overall, quite productive and enjoyable.
You’ll see that image tomorrow.
It’s an early November day in Pittsburgh. An eastbound Norfolk Southern manifest freight is passing beneath a dramatic canopy of green and gold gingko tree leaves in West Park.
This section of the Fort Wayne Line is also known as the trench and is a favorite of railroad photographers, particularly when those gingko trees turn colors in the fall.
As nice as this image is, it could have been better. In another week or less all the remaining leaves will have turned gold and the falling leaves will leave a golden carpet on the four-track mainline.
But my window of opportunity to photograph here was limited to the weekend. Still, I was pleased with my results.
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