Well it is finally time to begin my 2015 Amtrak Cross country* trip. This year I was down to the last of my priority routes, the Sunset Limited running from LA to New Orleans. Unlike the last time I was in LA to ride the Southwest Chief, this time I started the trip in Irvine, CA instead of San Diego as I had a group of friends in the OC. Also, ( Read more... )

Ok, I know I am rather late to the party on this one, but I finally had a chance this past Memorial Day to head on up to Poughkeepsie and take a walk over the Mighty Hudson on the former New Haven Railroad Highlands Bridge. My trip also involved a ride on the Metro-North Hudson Line to Croton-Harmon as well as a return trip via Amtrak's Empire ( Read more... )

So last week I threw up my videos from a vestibule ride taken on Train 79 between Alexandria and Selma. However thanks to my capitol upgrade I am now able to offer both stills and video taken at the same time. With a suction cup mount and sufficient batteries I can stick up my GoPro on the rear window and let it record as I shoot away with my ( Read more... )

For years I had been trying to get a good railfan video of a Northbound Caltrain Baby Bullet express. Usually I catch the 4:45 train departing San Jose as it consistently runs with gallery car equipment instead of the railfan un-friendly Bombardier coffin cars. However, on two previous occasions my video attempts were less than successful. ( Read more... )

Every so often I end up in Sunny Downtown San Jose for a conference and in my free time I find myself looking to explore the local VTA light rail system. As far as railfanning goes the VTA is pretty lackluster with bulkhead cabs and rather plain, boxy vehicles. It also has one of the cheapest signaling systems I've ever seen, but the operators ( Read more... )

Well a rear end ride from Washington to Selma via the RF&P and A-Line was going to be hard to beat and yeah, even though the crew change was in Raleigh, NC, extending my rear end pass for a few more lines, the former Southern Railway H-Line between eastern NC and Greensboro lacks both the traffic and the railroad infrastructure of the CSX route. ( Read more... )

For the last 6 years I have been making a bi-yearly trek down to Georgia to visit an old college friend who had wound up getting stuck down there. Ever since the first trip I have taken a somewhat circuitous route using Train 79, the Carolinian, to first travel to Greensboro, NC then transferring to Train 19 the Crescent. Well on the verge of ( Read more... )

Toward the end of April, I had a two day industry meeting on the University of Maryland campus in College Park. Since driving inside the beltway is a huge "no no", I decided to dump I95 and take mass transit it from Baltimore. Since the only university served by the popular Penn Line is Bowie State, I had to get dropped off downtown at the former ( Read more... )

Those of you who know me on Facebook are probably already aware of this, but mast March my father passed away from a long simmering condition. Over that month I was doing a good deal of driving to visit him in various hospitals and care centers. As a result I wound up with a number of random railfan photos that don't really come together into a ( Read more... )

About 2 years ago a friend of mine was able to take advantage of a rear vestibule ride on early morning Amtrak Regional Train 170 and provided me with a set of photos to process and upload. Well it took me a while, but I finally got them. The set covers the NEC from Philly to Boston and dates from March of 2013 so it's a bit of a step back in ( Read more... )