For my Fall 2014 trip to Georgia the plan was to visit the Atlanta Botanical Gardens with my friend and also get some photos of the relocated signal location on the CSX Abbeville Sub close to her house. This set also includes pictures taken at Washington Union Station during the northbound power change. You can find this set of photos here.

We ( Read more... )

Usually when I take my bi-yearly trips to Georgia I focus on the RF&P and A-Line portions of the trip as that always had the most interesting train traffic, signaling and history. When Train 79 turned off the ACL at Selma I usually went back to my seat and enjoyed the free Wi-Fi, because after all that portion was completely rebuilt about 10 years ( Read more... )

An interesting side effect of the Silverliner II/III retirement of 2012 was that I basically lost interest in the SEPTA Rail Rodeo held each fall and open to railfans via a lottery system. I had managed to attend the Rodeo in 2010 and 2011, but not since. This year I was again cool on working to get a spot, but when a pair of tickets fell into my ( Read more... )

One might expect that the photos from my annual Labour Day trip to New Englande, but this time I took a side trip to visit fellow Subchatter Lexcieeee who happens to live in Ossining which gave me an opportunity to take some photos and videos of the Metro North Hudson Line. The first photo stop was at Oscawana Island, which is that place in ( Read more... )

So if you recall my last few posts I wasn't just riding the Coast Starlight for my health. Unlike many of my cross country trips I actually had a genuine reason to head out to the west coast in the form of a computer security conference in San Diego. Now I've been to San Diego before, for about 24 hours in 2013 and then a longer stay in 2009. ( Read more... )

The majority of the Coast Starlight run actually takes place in daylight hours, with the longest stretch being from the Bay Area down to the LA Basin via the Southern Pacific's Coast route. In our last segment we left off at Gilroy, about 75 miles below Oakland an at the southern limit of the Bay Area commuting area. In this segment I will cover ( Read more... )

California's Capitol Corridor extends from Oakland to Sacramento, however there is also a southern section running down to San Jose. I had previously covered the main portion of the Capitol Corridor both in 2012 and 2014, but my Coast Starlight trip provided me with the opportunity to cover the less visible southern portion. Also included in this ( Read more... )

Before the age of formal Informal Railfan Trips, trips still happened, they were just fewer in number and not as well organized. Even the old Subtalk was known to get into the action and one such that trip organized in the summer of 2003 had the ambitious plan to go to Port Jervis and back on a weekend.

Port Jervis is always a tempting target ( Read more... )

So some weeks before my Coast Starlight trip kicked off we got one of those Amtrak e-mails explaining how there would be a surprise service modification in the form of a Bustitution between Portland and Eugene due to a UP maintenance blitz on the Brooklyn Sub. Now I have experienced this type of Bus Bridge before and it actually didn't cost much ( Read more... )

Alright, it's time for Part 2 of my trip down the Cascade Corridor on Amtrak Train 11, the Southbound Coast Starlight. We begin at Olympia and continue down to Portland, although there is a fairly large break in the middle where I had to go back to the dining car for lunch. This trip was taken in August 2014 on my way to a conference in San Diego ( Read more... )