Railfanning was not a major part of my Spring Break but I did manage to catch a few trains. I'll start off with Saturday March 1. Witness Q405-01 rolling westbound at West Feltonville past a cut of autoracks from Q216 that morning. In the second shot he makes his way past a few Maintenance of Way employees working to fix a 10MPH speed restriction through the interlocking.

Monday March 3 saw two ex-Conrail units still in blue. With Norfolk Southern setting a deadline for every engine in blue to be painted NS black by the end of 2009, this was a better sight than normal. NS 8422 (ex-CR 6235) is seen at Eddystone, PA waiting for Philadelphia Electric to empty the loaded coal train she brought in. NS 8301 (ex-CR 6027) is pulling off of the O-Track and onto the CSAO Linwood Industrial Track, destined for Stoney Creek Yard.

On Thursday March 6, I spent the day at SMS and chasing the SRNJ in southern New Jersey. At SMS our power for the day was Baldwin DS 4-4-10 9069. In the SMS yard was freshly painted SW14 1424, which will soon head to SMS in New York.

During the afternoon we managed to catch the SRNJ turn that interchanges with Conrail. The first photo is the power reversing to their cars before returning south. The second photo depicts the quality of the tracks these guys are running on. It literally took the train half an hour from the time we saw it crest the hill in the distance to the time it went past us. I'm not sure if the poor track quality had anything to do with it.

After quite a long wait the train finally arrived, moving along at a mere 5 miles per hour. One he passed we moved a bit farther south to get this bridge shot. The crew must crawl across the bridge and then throttle up for a run at a decent sized grade directly behind the photographer.

This SRNJ chase concluded my photography for the week. To see the entire rundown of trains, times, and engine numbers, check out the 2008 Train Log. Thanks for looking and enjoy the photos along with the rest of the site.

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