A.C.H. Photos
No Never, No More.
In 2019, I joined a group of friends for a solemn, but important, railfan journey to Norfolk Southern's Pittsburgh line. An often railfanned stretch of railroad, this line was still controlled by vintage Pennsy-era signals which made everything look cool. It was well known that the signals were on borrowed time, and we went to document their existence one last time. While we were there, NS began loading a train at Amfire Mining's Portage, PA loadout. At the time, these coal shuttles were almost exclusively powered by the railroad's SD80MACs: huge 5,000 HP behemoths capable of getting the heavy unit trains up and down the steep grades of the surrounding mountains. As a diversion from the Gevo parade, we took some time to shoot the loading operation, and the 80MACs were a nice bonus. Not even a year after this, NS announced they were retiring all 29 of these locomotives, and this photo became one for the history books. Even a scene like this, one that played itself out countless times in Pennsylvania coal country, all of a sudden became a treasured photo in my portfolio, and I am glad we decided it would be worth spending our time on. Because it turns out, surely it was.
No Never, No More.
In 2019, I joined a group of friends for a solemn, but important, railfan journey to Norfolk Southern's Pittsburgh line. An often railfanned stretch of railroad, this line was still controlled by vintage Pennsy-era signals which made everything look cool. It was well known that the signals were on borrowed time, and we went to document their existence one last time. While we were there, NS began loading a train at Amfire Mining's Portage, PA loadout. At the time, these coal shuttles were almost exclusively powered by the railroad's SD80MACs: huge 5,000 HP behemoths capable of getting the heavy unit trains up and down the steep grades of the surrounding mountains. As a diversion from the Gevo parade, we took some time to shoot the loading operation, and the 80MACs were a nice bonus. Not even a year after this, NS announced they were retiring all 29 of these locomotives, and this photo became one for the history books. Even a scene like this, one that played itself out countless times in Pennsylvania coal country, all of a sudden became a treasured photo in my portfolio, and I am glad we decided it would be worth spending our time on. Because it turns out, surely it was.