Little Toy Trains, Little Toy Tracks

Merry Christmas, yinz guys.

Running Up The Stairs, Gonna Meet You On The Rooftop

The House Is A-Rockin', Don't Bother Knockin'

As seen at the new employer. 

The stick figure's quizzical expression makes this one special.

The Daughter Of The Sheriff, The Daughter Of The Judge

Sunday before last, I went up to the TCA toy train show at the Shriners' Center over in Cheswick. Somehow I managed to miss the last one as well as the last Greenbergs' show of the year. But I made it and did find a few things worth picking up.

I usually don't pick up K-Line cars, unless they're something I've not seen produced by anyone else or they fit well with the rest of the collection.

On the way home, I made a detour to Brackenridge to see if anything was in the area, and I got a surprise, actually - the NS local was working the mill! Talking to some friends later on, I was informed that this was rare in the extreme, but I have photographic evidence (put the evidence in the car), so...

After the power latched onto their cut of cars, they sat for a couple of minutes. Not having brought my scanner, I figured I'd have a look further upriver, past the Tomsons' Scrap Steel & Iron Division. Occasionally, and if it hasn't yet been scrapped, you can spot an ex-B&LE Coil Coach gondola in the ATI yard, and I haven't managed a good photo of it yet. My hunt for it was interrupted by, of all things, a train blowing for a grade crossing - further upriver! Yes, there was a westbound on the way!

Hightailing it back past the scrapyard and the mill, I parked in a vacant lot just down from the mill, a spot I'd watched trains from countless times before. Under most circumstances, the Conemaugh Line - the NS route that comes up the Allegheny River from the North Shore - is a one-way street, used for eastbound through trains only. The rare westbounds are either the valley local train, or empty coal trains coming back from the power plant at Shelocta, PA. But today's train, strangely, was a loaded coal train. I'm not certain where it was coming from - my understanding is that the trains which originated at the Rosebud mine reached by the now-defunct Kiski Junction Railroad have quit running, and I don't know if Buffalo & Pittsburgh (connecting with NS at Freeport) hands off any coal to NS at the siding between Freeport and Brackenridge these days. 

A GEVO and two Dash-9s were the power for this train. The Dash-9s sounded incredibly chuggy, like the road diesel equivalent of lake pipes or a cherry bomb on the exhaust. It's hard to believe that they're approaching 30 years old!

And I've never before seen three Conrail hoppers together in a generally solid train of Top Gons and newer bathtub gons. There were one or two others in this train, solo. 

Not long after the coal train disappeared around the bend, the local turned his headlights up and his conductor began throwing the switches to the mainline - now it was the local's turn! I had no idea how far down the line he was headed - not far, as we'll see. A trip into the city would have been welcome, though. 

Today's local was powered by two SD40Es and a GP38-3. Both SD40Es were rebuilt from Conrail SD50s, indicated by the older Flexicoil trucks which Conrail preferred on their EMD products - up until EMD was unable to provide any alternative to the HTC trucks that came standard for every other road. Conrail also made the same substitution on their earlier SD40-2s.

The combined total of 8,000 HP seemed overkill for a train of just seven gondolas, which I don't believe were loaded. They didn't have coils, that's for sure. Sometimes ATI ships out coils by rail, and some actually go up the Kiski River to the Vandergrift Mill for additional processing. 

Even though I jumped in the car immediately after the last pic and took off, the local still kept well ahead of me, since I had to contend with the back streets and stop signs of Brackenridge and Tarentum and he didn't. But I caught up with him at the entrance to the West Tarentum yard, waiting for the conductor to line the switches off the main. The train pulled in and tied her down, all done for the day. I was sure of that because there was a crew van waiting in the yard when they pulled in. All in all, it was an interesting episode. 

But I'll have to write up the trip me and the guys took to Horseshoe Curve a month-ish ago, because that was even more interesting!

Oh No, William & Mary Won't Do

As seen on the Penn State campus earlier this year - on the day of the Nittany Lions' first home game, as a matter of fact. 

Wait... as in NCIS Donald Bellisario? 

Apparently, yes. He was a 1961 journalism grad from PSU; and in 2017 he bestowed a $30 million endowment on the university, which prompted them to rename the College of Communications after him, all according to Wikipedia. 

I did always think it clever that his TV production company was named 'Belisarius Prductions' - his last name in Latin transliteration - also the name of a highly successful Eastern Roman general of the 6th century. Bellisario was (something else I didn't know) an enlistee to the Marine Corps in the late 50's. This seems to have influenced his character creation process as a lot of his main characters are Navy and Marine vets.

I also didn't know that he was from Cokeburg, PA, a tiny town in Washington County southwest of Pittsburgh. Cokeburg's Wikipedia page explains that the town was used to film the series finale of another Bellisario creation - Quantum Leap. 

Now I actually want to see that last episode.