Welcome to RailsEast.com

Hello, and welcome! I appreciate your visit to my small, but slowly growing collection of railroad photographs from the eastern US. My images concentrate on the trains and locomotives of Norfolk Southern, CSX Transportation, and Conrail Shared Assets Operations in the northeast, along with other eastern, mid-Atlantic and southeastern shortline and commuter operations. Although I have the bulk of my work on the big RR archive site, I wanted to showcase my best photos and experiences in a larger viewing format, and thus RailsEast was born.

Feel free to leave a comment and voice your opinion, or just say Hello. Valid questions, criticism and corrections are encouraged, and will be responded to promptly. I hope that you enjoy my compilation, and I thank you again for stopping by.

Chris

Paying Respect

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Resembling a funeral procession, Alabama & Tennessee River Railway train Y102 rolls up to the Progress Rail Recycling facility in Albertville, Alabama. In tow are five ex-Norfolk Southern SD70ACu locomotives that will be set out, where they will await the scrapper’s torch in the coming months. In the beginning, the Union Pacific Railroad purchased 308 EMD SD9043MAC locomotives in 1996 and utilized them in high-speed freight service. Some reliability issues ensued, and by 2013 many were put up for sale. Norfolk Southern purchased 100 units from UP in 2014 to bolster their fleet and entered these into a rebuild program in 2016 which would transform these SD9043MAC units into SD70ACu locos. The upgrade program proved to have limited success, and many were sold off after just five or six years of service. The five seen here carried NS road numbers of 7234, 7248, 7257, 7282 and 7283. They did work hard for as many years as they could, though, and on this beautiful November day in Albertville we paid our respects to these once proud mainline locomotives.

Image recorded on November 8, 2023

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Black Friday Interruptus

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Oh, no, not today, I don’t have time for this. This is Black Friday after all and I just want to get home after a day of shopping and eating and drinking and shopping. Well, Conrail Shared Assets crew SA-31 has other plans this afternoon. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday, their normal Thursday afternoon run has shifted to Friday today, inconveniencing dozens and dozens of people just before sunset. People shouldn’t be surprised by a train in this area, the Raritan & Delaware Bay Railroad first laid rails through here in 1858. Of course, those were simpler times and people moved a bit slower, as did the horse & buggy upon which they travelled across town. In the year 2021, the train is just a nuisance as people dart to and fro in their modern day personal chariots, trying to stuff 25 hours of existence into 24 hours of any given day. Please, slow down and rest for 5 minutes as the train passes before you; give thanks for what you have and give thanks to the railroad for the transportation afforded, and enjoyed by, your ancestors long before the automobile was even invented.

Image recorded November 26, 2021

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Back to the simpler times

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The New Jersey Museum of Transportation is not a huge facility, but a visit here will surely bring you back in time where horses, and iron horses, were the norm. This narrow-gauge railroad is not long in length, but their venerable rail equipment will interest even the most discriminating rail enthusiast. The operating steam locomotives of years ago have given way to two very unique diesel-electric units on the property these days. A General Electric 25-tonner is the usual power for the railroad, but in July of 2021 she suffered a mechanical issue that relegated her to the engine house for several weeks for repairs. In her place, the ‘big girl’, 55-ton locomotive number 45 (also a product of General Electric) was pressed into service. A former workhorse for US Steel, she found her way to the narrow rails of  NJ many years ago. It’s a true find to discover a narrow-gauge railroad anywhere in the US, but in New Jersey it is operations as usual almost every weekend of the year for The Pine Creek Railroad, situated on state property at Allaire State Park in Wall, NJ. The entire 3,000 acre Allaire State Park complex features the original structures (including an operating general store, blacksmith and bakery) of the original settlers in this area, as they were back in the early 19th century. This summer day in July we find Station Master Jim observing the departure of the 1:00 train, as Michael, one of the youngest railroad engineers in the state of NJ, gives a wave and notches out the big GE locomotive on the first of two laps around the facility. Operating every half-hour, Mike & Jim and their trainmen and staff will welcome dozens and dozens of daily visitors back to the simple times, when trains transported people everywhere, decades before automobiles and trucks would come to rule the local transportation world.

Image recorded July 11, 2021

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Streets On Fire

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The freeze and thaw routine of winter weather can cause numerous issues on a railroad. Frequently, electrical continuity is not possible due to oxidation of the steel rails leading to a condition referred to as ‘rusty rails’ (a common railroad term). On this lightly-used line the train can not complete the electrical circuit and the gates & flashers will not activate properly. When this occurs, the conductor must protect the grade crossing with short burning (usually 5 minute) flares, or ‘fusees’ as they are known on the railroad. On this cold and snowy February day in Shrewsbury, NJ, the conductor has performed his duties according to rule 138c in the rulebook (Malfunction of Automatic Highway Crossing Warning Devices) and has thrown several fusees to warn oncoming vehicular traffic, giving the illusion of the streets being on fire in this scene about an hour after sunset. This Conrail Shared Assets train is on it’s regular Thursday afternoon run, but without it’s regular Browns Yard crew (SA-31). A shortage of crews based in Sayreville, NJ, has necessitated borrowing a crew from Metuchen Yard in Metuchen, NJ so this movement carries the symbol of ME-2 as it makes it way southbound on the Conrail Southern Secondary with additional lumber for Lakewood, NJ, some 20 miles away.

Image recorded February 11, 2021.

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A Northwest influence on the East Coast

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What a long, strange trip it has been for the two GP-20 locomotives seen here in New Jersey on a beautiful summer day in 2021. Happy 61st birthday to these two veterans built for the Great Northern Railway in 1960. Shortline railroads are chock full of venerable units such as the GP-20, and what a pleasure it is to see these old warriors still working well into the 21st century. RCRY 2092 and 2093 are pulling into their yard with inbound loads for several customers in the sprawling industrial park that is Raritan Center in Edison, NJ. It is interesting that the two locos, built for a railroad that ran from Minnesota to Washington state, are about to pass a Blue Spruce tree planted here, a variety of tree native to the northwest region of this country. Is it luck? Is it fate? No one is certain, but what an incredible coincidence as these former Northwest natives get together once again on the east coast of the US, with the NJ state flag and the US flag flying proudly, bringing a little northwest influence and beauty to the Jersey Shore.

Image recorded June 19, 2021

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