Recently salvage crews pulled up old French Trains from the bottom of Lake Gatun, that were sent to build the original Panama Canal Railway. These were sent over as part of the original excavation effort to create the Panama Canal. Sitting at the bottom of Lake Gatun for almost a century, they are actually in very good shape. Not only do they have steam locomotives, but they have a full fleet of muck cars as well. Head on over to Vintage News for more information and pictures.
I finally dug out my camera and took advantage of a beautiful weekend in the south to take some pictures. It proved to be a great day to catch some trains on the NS mainline between Charlotte and Salisbury. An even more eventful day was had by the crew of NS 119 who had their train go into emergency stop about a mile above where I was at. After they finally got going again, 800 feet later, the train emergency stopped again.
On July 3rd and 4th Norfolk Southern held a 30th anniversary celebration at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer NC. As part of this celebration they have painted 20 of their newest locomotives in the livery’s of their predecessor railroads grouped into the three “families”; Norfolk and Western, Southern Railroad, and Conrail.
This is a seemingly once in a lifetime occasion where all 20 of the locomotives will be in one place and will be as clean and spotless as they will ever be. I decided to brave the 95+ degree southern summer on the 4th and brought the camera along. Horrible sunburn and eight bottles of water later produced the pictures in the gallery below. Kudos to Norfolk Southern for spending the time and money to pay homage to the lines that pre-date it and also for organizing an event that allowed rail fans and railroad families a chance to see these masterpieces up close.
A beautiful small town setting to shoot trains is Landis NC, which is not too far from Concord NC. I hadn’t been out shooting in awhile and the weather on this Sunday was perfect.
NS P99 starts off the afternoon followed up by Amtrak 75, both southbound to Charlotte. NS 119 and 40W round out the afternoon.