Here's a great train that I caught yesterday on the Norfolk Southern... No two units are alike! Harold
GREAT shot Harold!!!!!! Looks like one of those whoses railroad is it shots and that GATX unit looks sharp!
The GATX unit looked very sharp.... when I first saw it from a great disance, I thought it was a Conrail unit! Harold
Interesting! In looking through the pictures, I am surprised at the amount of locomotives from other railroads that appear seemingly everywhere.
This train was a mixed bag of power... The GATX unit was clean and looks to have been recently shopped; the second unit, a NS GP38AC was smoking a lot; the 3rd unit is an ex-SP tunnel motor, it had stickers on the cab door stating "B unit only"; the 4th unit was an ex-CR GP40-2; and the 5th unit was the MRL SD45. This was the first time that I have caught an MRL unit of GATX unit sublettered GMTX Harold
That train was a really good catch Harold But you do seem to catch a lot of trains with a mixed bag of power
That's Boylan Junction.... a good place to photograph trains from. Here's a better shot of the trackage: Harold
It is an interesting place... I take pictures from the bridge (there are several more in my RailImages album), which allows me to get a different perspective; I can get a lot of roof detail shots too, useful for modeling. The bridge is new and wide... large sidewalks and parking is fairly close by. The shot above shows some of the interesting trackage (and history) of the area.... The track that is cutting across at a diagonal is actually the "original" Norfolk Southern, then Southern, tracks from Raleigh to Fayetteville. The area in the lower right quadrant is where Boylan Tower once stood... it was a large interlocking plant tha controlled the junction. The CSX train is on the same track that the NS train was on because there is a "shared" track territory between Raleigh and Cary where it is two tracks and they generally follow "right hand running". (Trains leaving Raleigh for Cary and beyond generally use the track on the right of the train). Harold
The track on the left of the train is actually a long spur, with a couple of sidings, and also leads off the "old" NS track to the small yard that is on the other side of the bridge. Harold
Notice this train is not following the "right hand running" convention.... this is because this train is making a move from Glenwood Yard (about 3 miles away) down to the Junction. The train will pass the switch on the other side of the bridge, then back his cars into the tracks seen in the upper right hand corner. Harold
Most likely, this train is full of cars for the feed mill a couple of miles away, so they will back the train all of the way down there and spot the cars! Also, the Amtrak station, an old Southern Rwy. station, is just out of sight of the yard tracks. Harold
