Excellent vantage point. Great shot, all the more appealing with a Conrail leader.
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Thanks, Mitch. I really expected it to get rejected on loose cropping, but I didn't want to cut out any of the urban landscape on both sides of the tracks. If I recall, I was with fellow RP contributor Rob Palmer, and this was taken from the fire escape of the former Reading Brewing Company building. It was pretty rickety then, and I doubt that it I still there today. Although the Conrail power is nice, I'm pretty sure that a few of my older friends could trump that with Reading power in this scene.
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| Posted by xBNSFer on February 4, 2015 | |
Sad - another obviously neutered piece of railroad that looks to have been at least three tracks in the past.
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A Reading leader vs Conrail would've been cool and I was thinking that very thought. Each ironically nostalgic at this point, maybe NS could help out here and send a heritage unit! Love the crop and inclusion of the skyline and surrounding area.
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xBNSFer,
This was the Reading's two-track main to Philadelphia, but your impression couldn't be farther from the truth. The single track shown here is much better-maintained than the two tracks that it replaced. Reading is a complex web of trackage. The original main line from Philadelphia shown here continues through the yard and on to the anthracite region (now the Reading and Northern timetable west from Reading). The Lebanon Valley branch goes west to Harrisburg, and the East Penn branch goes east to Allentown. All four of these lines connect to the Reading Belt Line, which is a bypass around the Reading yard that is about 20 miles long. Almost all trains through Reading use the belt line and bypass the yard, meaning that the track in this photo only sees a few trains a day. It's not indicative of a lack of traffic in Reading, just that most of that traffic uses the belt line.
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That's quite a fill. The PRR and Reading were rather notorious for that back in the day! Saved lives, sped up trains, but left many neighborhoods divided. Would love to see a shot taken today from that same location.
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| Posted by xBNSFer on February 7, 2015 | |
I understand what you're saying, Doug, but a single track railroad can't move traffic with the speed and flexibility that a two main track railroad can, and that was my observation, not so much how heavily used the route through the yard vs. the "belt line" bypass (which is also largely single track) is, nor what the relative condition of the track is. This, as you said, was Reading's "main line" to Philadelphia. At some point, two main tracks were here, and although by the dawn of the Conrail era they may have been in poor condition (as was nearly all of the track Conrail inherited), the fact remains that trains headed west didn't need to sit still waiting for trains heading east (or for faster trains to go by, perhaps), and vice-verse, as they do on the single track railroad now in place.
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I haven't railfanned Reading in over 15 years, but I don't recall trains being backed up on the Philly line due to congestion. Keep in mind that the main line is double-tracked east of Birdsboro, and I think west as far as Klapperthal Junction. From the belt line connection at these two points west to either Wyomissing Junction or Belt Line Junction, the main line and the belt line are effectively a separated grade double-track railroad. Where I recall trains routinely getting stabbed is at Belt Line Junction, waiting to get clearance on the single-track Blandon Low Grade.
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