Tag: Allentown PA

Intermodal is big business for todays railroads, especially in the northeast, with the major seaports of Newark and Elizabeth, NJ shipping & receiving thousands of containers and trailers every month. Several trains leave the north Jersey area daily, and one of the larger ones is Norfolk Southern symbol 21M, running from Secaucus, NJ to Chicago, Illinois, generally leaving somewhere around sunrise on a normal day.

On a beautiful September morning, we see westbound NS 21M storming the curve at the western end of Allentown Yard, coming off of the bypass around the yard, and transitioning from the NS Lehigh Line to the NS Reading Line. For the next 35 miles, the crew will travel the Reading Line, and then enter the Harrisburg Line for points west. NS 2764, an EMD SD70M-2, leads a couple of GE sisters on this ‘hot’ train, and will see few delays along their route; competition with the trucking industry mandates a tight schedule for the railroads, to ensure that the mile-long trains continue to be ‘a mile long’.

Image recorded September 14, 2013.

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Originally built for service south of the Mason-Dixon Line, these two locomotives are strange bedfellows, both in their current location, and their current assignment.

Norfolk Southern SD40-2 6141 was built for the Norfolk & Western Railroad as number 6141 in May of 1978, primarily for mainline duty through the mid-Atlantic region of the US. Norfolk Southern MP15-DC 2408 has retained her original number also, ordered by the Southern Railway in April of 1982 for switching service in the southeast region of this great land. How coincidental, that, in the year 2010, following the merger of these two great roads in 1982 and the subsequent acquisition of parts of the Conrail empire in 1999, these two units with so much in common, yet built for two vastly different railroad applications would become partners in this day’s operations as yard hostlers in Allentown Yard in eastern Pennsylvania.

These two veteran locomotives are yet another example of the fine products produced by the dedicated men and women of the General Motors ElectroMotive Division, 32 and 28 years ago respectively.

Image recorded April 24, 2010.

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In the mid-19th century, the only mode of freight transportation was a horse-drawn barge along a canal beside a main river. To get to Jersey City, NJ from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in, say, 1855, one would load their barge to be pulled across the Lehigh Canal, seen here in the foreground, eastward to Easton, Pa, and across the Delaware River, to continue across New Jersey via the Morris Canal. Quite time consuming to say the least, but this was before the advent of the automobile/truck and also the railroad.

Since railroads tend to frequently follow rivers, due to their ‘flat’ geographic profile, it is with no surprise that we find, in the 21st century, a very modern ‘iron horse’ crossing the very canal that brought freight transportation to this region some 200 years ago. On former Lehigh Valley RR trackage, Norfolk Southern 7632 (a GE ES40DC) brings NS train 19G across the rail bridge, built in 1916, and across the original canal, to start her trip west on the NS Lehigh Line.

Image recorded May 29, 2010.

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Performing one of several ‘doubling’ maneuvers (several on this day due to having to set-out 2 shop cars for repairs), Norfolk Southern train 19G crosses the Lehigh Canal at the west end of Allentown Yard, ready to make her last shove before finally assembling the train for the run west.

‘Doubling’ frequently occurs when the total train length is greater than one or more yard tracks full of a particular trains consist; a train crew would, for example, couple to the cars on track 13, then pull forward to clear the switch, and shove back pick up the cars on track 14, as both yard tracks 13 & 14 would be full of cars destined for the next major classification yard in the same direction.

Today will see an all-General Electric loco head end, with NS 7632 (ES40DC) and NS 9939 (C40-9W) handling the mainline duties, as soon as the Lehigh Line dispatcher gives them the signal at CP BURN, just a half-mile west of this location.

Image recorded May 29, 2010.

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Traversing the bridge across the Lehigh Canal dating back to 1916, just west of CP ALLEN, Norfolk Southern train 38G begins its journey to Pavonia Yard in Camden, NJ. Today’s power has a mix of GE and EMD power, with NS 2528 (SD70, blt 12/93), followed by NS 9817 (C40-9W, blt 4/04) and NS 2712 (SD70M-2, blt 12/05). With the train just assembled in Allentown Yard, the engineer will pull another 3/4 of a mile to the home signal at CP BURN to pick up his conductor, and head west to Reading on the NS Lehigh Line.

Image recorded April 24, 2010.

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