A Bittersweet Victory at Vesuvius
By the end of our Virginia trip, we'd gotten a pretty decent haul of shots and signals, but one had eluded us for a while. Vesuvius, a signal in a phone-signal-less valley with a very, very narrow margin in which light works with the signal. We'd started with three of us in the car, one leaving us the day before, and today, the other would be heading home. He had a train to catch in Roanoke, but both of us had a train to catch on the H-Line - NS 14Z. We shot him at Lithia and Arcadia, and the math seemed to line up for good enough light at Vesuvius... which was almost an hour away.
With an eye on the clock, we raced north, arriving at CP Vesuvius to find it red. We waited and waited, and just as it seemed like we were gonna have to call it to get back to Roanoke in time for Audie's train home, the signal upgraded to yellow. A minute later, the railfan we met at Arcadia pulled up and told us 14Z was real close. We made the choice to grab our shot here and then book it south afterwards.
Lo and behold, 14Z was on us within ten minutes and blasted through into the only technically doubled tracked portion of the H-Line. NS4275 is in fact the DPU on 14Z, making this shot an incredibly cheeky going-away shot. Considering how difficult traffic is on this line though, and the lack of EOTD, I'm okay with it.
This wound up being the last shot of the trip. We returned to Roanoke in time for Amtrak, then I was on my own. No more trains rolled up or down the Roanoke District until the next morning, but by then I was on my way back home.
Vesuvius and the rest of the H-Line and even the other nearby lines that retain some of these classic CPLs are on the chopping block for replacement with new signals. I don't expect to be able to make it back far enough that way in time to shoot them again, making this probably the last photo I'll get of a train at a CPL. Even if NS doesn't cut them down as soon as is expected, I'll be losing my job by the end of the year. It's not likely I'll find a place as generous with time off as this, and seeing as my newly-married wife and I live in different countries and need time off work to see each other... well, suffice to say, trains are gonna have to be a little more on the backburner, hah. You never know, but time will tell.
If this was indeed my last chance to see these signals, I think it ended pretty well.
A Bittersweet Victory at Vesuvius
By the end of our Virginia trip, we'd gotten a pretty decent haul of shots and signals, but one had eluded us for a while. Vesuvius, a signal in a phone-signal-less valley with a very, very narrow margin in which light works with the signal. We'd started with three of us in the car, one leaving us the day before, and today, the other would be heading home. He had a train to catch in Roanoke, but both of us had a train to catch on the H-Line - NS 14Z. We shot him at Lithia and Arcadia, and the math seemed to line up for good enough light at Vesuvius... which was almost an hour away.
With an eye on the clock, we raced north, arriving at CP Vesuvius to find it red. We waited and waited, and just as it seemed like we were gonna have to call it to get back to Roanoke in time for Audie's train home, the signal upgraded to yellow. A minute later, the railfan we met at Arcadia pulled up and told us 14Z was real close. We made the choice to grab our shot here and then book it south afterwards.
Lo and behold, 14Z was on us within ten minutes and blasted through into the only technically doubled tracked portion of the H-Line. NS4275 is in fact the DPU on 14Z, making this shot an incredibly cheeky going-away shot. Considering how difficult traffic is on this line though, and the lack of EOTD, I'm okay with it.
This wound up being the last shot of the trip. We returned to Roanoke in time for Amtrak, then I was on my own. No more trains rolled up or down the Roanoke District until the next morning, but by then I was on my way back home.
Vesuvius and the rest of the H-Line and even the other nearby lines that retain some of these classic CPLs are on the chopping block for replacement with new signals. I don't expect to be able to make it back far enough that way in time to shoot them again, making this probably the last photo I'll get of a train at a CPL. Even if NS doesn't cut them down as soon as is expected, I'll be losing my job by the end of the year. It's not likely I'll find a place as generous with time off as this, and seeing as my newly-married wife and I live in different countries and need time off work to see each other... well, suffice to say, trains are gonna have to be a little more on the backburner, hah. You never know, but time will tell.
If this was indeed my last chance to see these signals, I think it ended pretty well.