New Year's Holiday Railfanning

Greetings All,

Happy New Year!!!

The annual New Year's Railfanning starts off another year of the N.Y.C.T.L. blog! This is a fun but somewhat exhausting time as I dig deep into the locomotives and rolling stock of my two sons as well as my own barely run equipment. As you can imagine not everything came out of the box ready to run! Thankfully most did!

The Sharks are in the pool!!! The freight pool that is! 

An A-B set of Sharks swims into Terminal Yard.

Cab units were plentiful! An A-B-B-A set of B&O F7s pass Hohman Ave Tower with a priority freight train. 

Not to be outdone a PRR Merchandise Service train rolls across the High Line powered by an A-B-B-A set of F7s.

A gratuitous shot of the PRR units!

A PRR Trainmaster rolls into Terminal Yard under the watchful eyes of some of his FM siblings. No static at all!!!

A and B C Liners with an Erie Built in gold leaf Roman lettering(?) prepare to depart.

A C Liner and Erie Built in a slightly different lettering scheme (buff Futura yellow?) will be next out of the yard.

An EL Alco PA-PB consist are in freight service today. To bad the EL did not have any PBs!

A new lash up is born! Powered Athearn BB SD45s sandwich  pair of non powered U28Cs. This set moved smoothly and the SD45s had more that enough power for a good sized train.

ATSF GP20 and NYC U30B mimic a Streator, IL run thru freight .

 

The Burlington Northern formed in 1970 and is represented with a GP38 and SD40-2.

 

The Chessie System formed in 1973 made their annual colorful appearance with a GP35 SD40-2 combo.

This little 30+ year old Athearn BB switcher continues to run well and is a fan favorite.

EL GP35 2570 leads an EL SD45 Bicentennial unit and an EMD leased SD45 circa 1976.

For blog follower Jade Fog the Reading GP40 and Penn Central SD35 represented the 1976 Conrail colorful years.

A Conrail GP40-2 leads a mixed bag of leased and predecessor engines.

GP40 #3297 sports the post1991 Conrail Quality paint scheme.

Dash8-40CW #6062 leads Dash-40C out of the yard with a stack train. 

A Conrail Quality SW1500 works the yard.

A five unit brace of Mantua engines in CR and one in PRR paint bring a train up the slide as a stack train holds on the secondary.

New York & Atlantic GP38-2 #271 featuring the 9/11 memorial is on the headend of a freight. I personally saw the 1:1 engine many times and sadly the 9/11 memorial faded very quickly. Still it was a shame that it was repainted into a generic NY&A paint scheme.

NY&A GP38-2 #261 enjoys some layout time. The NY&A took over freight operations from the LIRR in May 1997.

From the far North the Alaska RR with four McKinley Explorer passenger cars added to the festivities.

Uncle Pete stopped by in the form of this AC4400-CW.

The NS 7140 represents one part of the Conrail split. NS received 42% of Conrail stock in 1998 and began operating their newly owned portion in 1999.

CSX Dash 8-40CW 7664 represents the other part of the CR split and the CSX's 58% of Conrail stock.

Here are a pair of videos shot of the above trains plus others not photographed. The weather was cold but it was a hot time in Empire City!

Happy New Year to All!!!

See ya soon!!!