Nostalgia & History > Conrail's First Winter at Horseshoe

Two photos of early Conrail piggybacks at Horseshoe Curve, taken during that first winter of 1976-77 when nothing was going right.  They did manage to get these two high priority trains up the hill (photo 1) and down the hill (photo2).

We had a carload of railfans headed from Albany down to an East Broad Top "Winter Spectacular" and of course stopped by Horseshoe for a few photos.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/17 12:33 by march_hare.

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Dang, I wish I could see those 40' trailers behind. Sometimes photo's are like that - show things you wish you could see but are in the background.

Cheers, Jim

Yeah, at this point, my buddy Jim Odell (whose head I cropped out of photo 1) had just gotten me into shooting freight car photos.  That was a tough thing to do, convincing a cash-strapped railfan to increase his film budget.  What he didn't do was convince me to shoot pig trailers.

Wish he had.  What else was I wasting money on?  Rent, food, my girlfriend...

Those SD45s look mighty good even in PC black. Great exposures on a cloudy day.

Andy

I can hear the flanges squealing!!!!

march_hare Wrote:
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> Yeah, at this point, my buddy Jim Odell (whose
> head I cropped out of photo 1) had just gotten me
> into shooting freight car photos.  That was a
> tough thing to do, convincing a cash-strapped
> railfan to increase his film budget.  What he
> didn't do was convince me to shoot pig trailers.
>
> Wish he had.  What else was I wasting money on? 
> Rent, food, my girlfriend...

Hind sight huh?!!

The photo's did turnout very well - the dark painted diesels show well in these photo's.

Cheers, Jim

Nice catches. Those PC SD45s really looked good. One thing lacking in today's sealed cab environment is seeing the engineer in control of the locomotive, similar to steam days. Thanks for posting.

One further detail from the day: 

We had maybe an inch or two of fresh snow overnight, on top of a melted and refrozen slush pile.  My location for photo 1 was an attempt to get far enough up the hillside so I could see the train curving away behind the power.   I got high enough up the hill to shoot over Jim's head, barely.  Jim was 6 foot 10 inches tall, so that was at least something.  But I needed another 6 or 8 vertical feet to get the perfect angle, and the refrozen surface beneath that morning's snow just didn't allow that.  I would have needed climbing spikes or an ice axe.

The CNW 45 without dynamic brakes was a nice catch as well!

Posted from Android

Awesome pair considering it was shooting black engines on such a raw day! That first shot is incredible BTW!