Ohh Warren, Forgot to say an mention.... Your welcome man.. Anytime you get in the area. stop by. you know where I live so. Same with all the others as well.... I enjoyed it all. even tho I had a pound of cinders in my eyes! HA! talk about a steam buff.... HA HA HA
Hey Gang!!! I had a blast with all of you friday & saturday and it's a time I won't forget! I got a message from the yahoo Sand Patch forum that there was a derailment of a coal thrain in McKeesport and one in Maryland on friday that might have knotted up the works for the low number of trains. After we split up at the Cumberland Yards, me & 7600 cruised past the Cumberland Shops to see what's there. I saw an SD60M painted in "Dark Future" (DIP) and I told 7600, DON'T LOOK, JOHN!! He did and he replied "YUKK, THOSE DANG DIPS, YUKK"!! I sure can't wait to see the pics on here of our friday & saturday. But more good news, all 9 miners were pulled out alive from the Quecreek mine early sunday morning. 8 of the 9 are expected to be discharged from the hospitals by the end of today. I hope we can do this again and maybe railfan the Mance Horseshoe Curve and the Eastern Portal of the tunnel. Johnnytrains, it was a pleasure to meet you and Louie, and hopefully nextime, I won't have to roust 7600 out of bed!!! Come Back Anytime; Mike K.
Mike, I hear ya on rousting me outta bed. that dang thunderstorm killed the lights for awhile so.. I hated that!!!! Anyway yes we all had a blast..... Hope to do it again!
Hey John, and Mike and Herman and Johnnie et al, SHOW ME THE GROUP PICTURE! At least one that shows the front of you instead of your backsides! Sounds like you guys had a great time.
Fitz, We sure did!!!! Thiers a few pictures of all of us together. we have to get them scanned or uploaded to someones puter then sent to me to upload them in my web space to post on the board.... I'll see that their posted when I recieve them an slightly edit them to fit half screen to trainboard.... Stay tuned!
WOW! I'm not sure where to begin so let me start at the beginning! Thursday morning I picked up Louie at 5 am out on Long Island and we had a good run until we crossed over into MD. which you must do if you take the Southern route to Sand Patch. A while after we crossed over the state line, we hit fog thicker than pea soup. It poured rain right after we got to my family's house. We had some on the road but the worst came afterwards. We went up to the station in Meyersdale after the rain and later on a second trip back to Meyersdale surprised John and he gave me a beautiful engine that he had reworked and repainted. That was really nice! John is a great guy, and anyone who feels sluggish should get a transfusion from him!!!!!!! Start talking about trains and John goes into a hyper-railroad mode!!!!!!! I wonder how such a young man has an enclycopedia of steam info in his head!!!!!!! John, you are amazing. We also saw the 3 layouts John, Pete and Mike and another guy had built in the station. I was floored when they said they had made it in two weeks!!!!!!!!! And like John said, we went down to the old B&O station and saw Amtrak's Capitol Limited and a couple of freights. That was a good start! Man, did we chatter about railroads!!!!! It was already about 9 pm and Louie and I had been up since the wee hours of the morn. Time for home. Friday morning at the station, I met Warren (Herman the German) and I must say he is one of the nicest guys and I hope we'll be friends from now on and can get together again. Maybe in Ohio??????? I met Brian just for several minutes until he went off with his buddies to railfan in Saulsbury. I think camping through that WICKED thunderstorm that pounced on the area at 2-3 am was rough for him. It was bad. Now for Mike....... Are you related to John?????? Ask Mike about diesels.......LOL! Mike is a great guy with a love of diesels and steam too! He is full of incredible info! I can see he more than enjoys railfanning and modeling!!!!!! Mike's scanner came in very handy because mine is having technical problems. ( I am absoluetly burned up over my scanner...) He and John know the mileposts and names of the areas nearby which I would have never known had I been there without them!!! While we stood for a long while up on the old Saulsbury Viaduct (now rails to trails) above the CSX tracks, Mike monitered all the chatter until he realized a couple of trains were coming our way. We almost left before that.........yikes. Murphy's Law of Railfanning was defeated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were walking off the viaduct........ We never did see the Eastbound Amtrak train run through, and when I got home, Mike had sent me an email saying there was a derailment that had fouled up the route over Sand Patch. That had explained the few freights, but what happened to the Eastbound Capitol Limited.......?????? (Just got it from John too! I told you they should be joined at the hip!) I'm hoping that my still photos and video come out well. We were pretty darn high up over the tracks!!!! By the way, did anyone tell Brian we were watching him and his buddies in the distance by the bridge abutment? LOL! Oh, thanks again Mike for shooting with my 35mm while I filmed the trains! We had a trucker down on the highway below blow grade crossing signals and man, he must have laughed when he saw a bunch of guys run to the railing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DIDN't get that on film! Getting back to the model railroads at the station, Pete had told John to rustle up something to run on the layout for us. (Can't leave things there. The station opens to the public on weekend and the boys aren't there all the time.) Well, John blew us away with his 14 (?) car homemade work train in B&O Blue. I have already put in a request for a special order car for myself! John, any good MOW color of your choice is good with me!!!!!! We were freaked out really. (John is extremely talented and........nuts........! ). And John was running big steam as smoothly as a polished gem. Incredible. After the station, viaduct and lunch we went over to Sand Patch and hung out. John took us about a half mile up this trail to the top of Sand Patch Tunnel! We were hanging over the top and caught two trains in and out of the tunnel! Way cool!!!!!!!! we missed one too while going up the trail. Warren found a couple of ticks on him and we were careful not to go into the woods or grass. We did see a HUGE doe run in front of us while we were going up the hill. Pete and Louie opted to remain in the car and if I know them, feel asleep until those freights woke them up! Those bums told us they started up the trail behind us and saw a HUGE black bear which made them turn around! They finally admitted they were kidding!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!! I had to go back to my cousin's to see my aunt and uncle, so we kind of said goodbye earlier than I would have liked to. But I think we were tired by then anyway. We did see a lone helper pass as we were preparing to leave. Sat morn, we all got together at the Cumberland Station and had a blast watching the train come over the bridge from West Virginia where it is stored. To make a long story short, we had a wonderful ride and the cinders absolutely coverd us!!!!!! And we were only hanging out of the old army kitchen car side door and also between two passenger cars. It was great!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some of the cars were old LIRR cars (bought second hand by the LIRR years and years ago!) and there were two old NS cars too. I guess they were Pullmans from the way they looked and must have been something that ran on NS inspection trains.......... We watched the old 2-8-0 be turned on the turntable in Frostburg and I must say that was awesome!!!!!!!! Our 1 1/2 hour layover went quickly and of course we ate lunch and shot the breeze about trains and modeling! We met a guy from California who was there and we had fun finding out where we were all from! He was enjoying the turning of the loco and was smiling ear to ear! John can tell you what he is involved with because I forgot already! The ride back was great and afterwards we hit the hobby shop in Cumberland, and myself, Warren and Mike went home with Goodies! I swear Mike is related to John. LOL. John runs large steamers and Mike runs 7000 foot long boxcars!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! I picked up a beautiful Athearn bay widow caboose in a CSX red OPERATION LIFESAVER scheme. WOW! We had watched Brian and his crew chasing us on the ride all the way! (By the way, finally getting a chance to talk to him, he was a nice guy also!) He shot a photo of us standing between the cars shouting our heads off at him!!!!!! This whole trip was hysterical!!!!!!! I hated to end our get together after just 2 days. Louie and I would like to thank my cousins, Peter and Sandra for their wonderful, wonderful hospitality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had a smooth ride back home and only had a little traffic at the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan. I dropped off Louie at Penn Station. It would have been another 3 hours to take him home and to get back with Sunday beach traffic. It was a 7 hour ride home with breakfast and a couple of pit and gas stops. I'm grateful he choose to go home on the railroad. I was so happy to hear the miners were pulled out alive from the mine cave-in. That was only 20 miles from Sand Patch, near where flight 97 went down on 9/11 too. Warren, your photos look great. Thanks again guys for coming. It was a blast!!!!!!!!!
John. I got a notice that The delivery of the 6 pics I sent failed but I see that you got at least 2. I will try sending them 1 or 2 at a time. Stand by.
John, I hope you get those photos!!!!! Warren, what happened to the guy on the lawn mover? Did he roll it over? Mike, I forwarded the derailment email to Louie. My (hopefully) only photography glich is the fact that I jumped out of the car as the Capital Limited flew by and for some wierd reason, the tape was blank for about 15 seconds until I saw the ground and my feet and heard myself say, "That was cool!" Then it just went on to the next train......my fault, although I had about 10 seconds to leap out of the car and shoot it. I guess it never started recording because the camera hadn't even turned itself on. Missed a good subject. The rest of the short tape captures all of us well and highlights our trip. In a day or so I'll have my 35mm shots. If I don't have anything redundant to the others, I'll eventually get it onto TB.
Thanks, Johnnytrains, it was my pleasure to be with you guys for the weekend and, as for me and John, we've been friends for years and we have both boned up over the years on local railroad history, operations, and motive power. Like I said, I've lived here all my life and have ridden and drove school bus for my Mom & Dad for the local district and now when I go to work, I pass the low line on the old B&O on my way to Confluence. If you come again, maybe we could go there because that is where trains going up start to get a run for the grade. I can do a little railfanning to during my lunch because the ford garage is across from the main line. All in all I had a great time.
JT, Glad to see you Louie made it hope safely.. Thats great! As for the fellow from Califonia I can't remember what he was into. I forgot. We all had overloaded brains!!!!! As for me an Mike, We're both close friends. Known each other for years an we just studdied steam in my case an diesel in Mikes case at a young age. and just crammed the brain full of local railroad history.... As for the Sand Patch visitors. you all were great company.... I look forwards in doing that again! I'm still hyped up! off the wall me!!! HA! Go figure... Anyway you guys with the pictures... If you can get them scaned or something send them to me in e-mail a few 2 at the most of their big files. my buffer in hotmail won't handle anything bigger then 1100 KB at a time.... I got the first 3 out and done an on my web space to post them on TB as soon as possible to free up my inbox.... Warren let me know if you can send them. If not i'll give you my moms e-mail so you can mail them to her an I'll get them and get them uploaded to my web space to post them being my mom has outr servers given e-mail address...
Hey JT! I know you would have laughed your @$$ off if you'd have seen that guy careening down the hill on that lawnmower. It would'nt have been too funny had he gotten hurt but luckily he didn't. Can't say the same for his Lawn tractor though. I guess he was looking for his kids driving around the neighborhood on his mower. (Ahh the small town life!) When he attempted to downshift to a lower gear for the hill he said it got stuck out of gear and got rolling too fast for the cheesy brake to stop it. When he got to the bottom of the hill he steered to the left and went right by us on 3 wheels (The left rear off the ground) crashing into the curb on the bridge over the tracks. Like I said. It was then that I looked down at my right hand and realized the my vid cam was on standby. Anyway, he was shook up but OK. The local Polizei came by when him and his buddy were trying to load his busted mower onto the back of his buddys pickup. He (the cop) got a good laugh too but no ticket! If I were to ride my lawn tractor down the road here where I live? Man! They'd probably call the men with the funny white coats for me! It was real good to meet you and Louie. We gotta do this again! Anywhere within a days drive is cool with me. I'll keep the pics coming a few at a time.
OK Fitz, Heres your request.... The gang pictures of us all standing beside the loco that hauled our foaming butts up the mountain from Cumberland, MD. to Frostburgh, MD... I LOVED IT!! every second. All good memories! Ones I'll never forget!!!!!! From left to right: Mike "6206_S1a", Warren "HermanZGerman", John "Johnny Trains, (in red) Louie, JTs friend from NYC, next to him, Brian, And i'm on the end!!!!!!! "7600EM_1" And then Mike and Myself at the Summit of The Alleghenies... The top of the B&O's Famous "Sand Patch" Grade on the western side of the tunnel... ENJOY EVERYONE!!!! [ 30. July 2002, 16:02: Message edited by: LadySunshine ]
Heres a few picture from the top of Sand Patch tunnel.... Right above the trains!!!!!! These are headed west bound on number 2 track! ENJOY!!!!!! [ 29. July 2002, 04:19: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
THANKS Barb!!!! Nice to be around a bunch of train crazed craaazies !!!!! HA! heres some more!!!! This one is the loco taking on water after we watched it pull into the station.... Mike at the Penstock (as the B&O called the water colums) and me walking away from it to the front of the loco! This one is of the acual ride hanging out the side slightly to get a movement picture from between 2 cars on the open ends [ 29. July 2002, 12:01: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
Now there's a motley crew if ever I saw one! HA HA HA!! (just kidding- it's good to put faces to names. All the pics look good- especially the shots of that WM steamer!)
Bob, YES whatta bunch of Motley Crew guys! HA! it was fun tho... I hope to do it again!!!!!! As for the WM steamer. That thing was doggin down and stompin up the moutain... for hauling i think 8 passenger cars...So you could hear the boiler thump and the stomp on the grades.... WILD!!!! I loved it.. all except the 2 times i gotta mouth full of cinders. Which didn't taste good but ohh well. thats a bunch of train crazed crazies for ya!!!! But it was a good background to do the "The Gang" shot beside the big 2-8-0 WM H-7b.. made a great photograph!!!! With me beside the cylinders!!!!!
John, thanks for posting those. You guys do look like a bunch of foamers, and it's good to see there is SOME steam running on the east coast! Good old Western Maryland. I have never seen that engine but hear she has some great stack talk. Anybody headed for Williams, AZ and the NRHS convention next month? I have pretty much decided to go.
