T.G.'s Photography Blog

With rain falling in the Central New York area on Wednesday, my son wanted to go find some trains, so we headed out to see what we could find on CSX's Rochester Subdivision. Initially, we drove west to Memphis, NY. While driving there we heard on the scanner a train going through the defect detector there. The hot box detector at that location reported that the detector was malfunctioning. When we got to the Bennetts Corners Road crossing, which is just to the east of the detector, I spotted a CSX maintenance worker working on it.  AMTK 108 and AMTK 125 leading the Lake Shore Limited I decided to start working our way back east along the line, and when we crossed the bridge over the tracks at Warners, NY., I spotted a headlight in the distance, to the west of town. As we were driving east toward Pottery Road I heard the Memphis defect detector (mile post QC302.6) go off, reporting an axle count of 52. That told me that it was the Lake Shore Limited . We got to the Pottery Road cros

 Back on August 29th, I caught the Waning Gibbous Moon in the late morning. This weekend, I was able to catch the Waxing Crescent Moon on the evening of Saturday, September 11, 2021. The Waxing Crescent Moon The Waning Gibbous Phase is when the amount of the Moon surface that is visible from Earth shrinks, ranging from 99.9% to 50.1%. The Waxing Crescent Moon is when the visible amount of the Moon's surface starts to grow, after the New Moon. The Waxing Crescent Moon's visible amount of surface ranges from 0.1% to 49.9%. The Waxing Crescent Moon Photograph taken on September 11, 2021 at 19:26 EST, from Syracuse, NY

While driving toward Memphis, New York, I heard the track defect detector at Memphis (milepost QC302.6) go off for Amtrak train P284-14. The defect detector reported the train to be traveling 81 MPH, so I  knew there was no chance of catching P284. Q162-13, with CSXT 3453 The first, and only, train I photographed today was train Q162-13, which was sitting just to the west of the Bonta Bridge Road crossing, at Jordan, New York. Q162-13 had CSXT 3453 as the only locomotive on the front of the train. The train did have CSXT 3283 serving as the distributed power unit (DPU) on the rear of the train. CSXT 3453 on the point of Q162-13 Q162-13 had been stopped to the west of CP308 (milepost QC308.7) to allow a number of trains to pass by it on Track 1, before it would cross over to Track 1 from Track 2 to proceed east. I believe Track 2 had a maintenance worker checking something near milepost 297.76 (Pottery Road) further east of here. A tighter shot of CSXT 3453 Q162 is a daily intermodal

While passing over the Syracuse Terminal Subdivision near Destiny USA Mall, I saw the tail end of a manifest freight heading east. I decided to head over to DeWitt Yard to see if I could catch it there. I figured the chances were low at catching the train, since it had a big head start on me, but I tried anyway. Q364-12 at DeWitt Yard The train must have slowed to a crawl as it headed east from the Destiny USA Mall area because I managed, without speeding, to get to DeWitt Yard before the train showed up. The train turned out to be Q364-12, a daily manifest freight that travels from Avon, Indiana to Selkirk, New York. Below, the train is passing through CP285, on the western side of  DeWitt Yard .  Q364-12 passes the "Thank You Rail Roader's" sign at DeWitt Yard  Today, Q364 was running with four locomotives in a 4x0x0 configuration, and was hauling 117 cars. Locomotives, CSXT 5204, CSXT 829, CSXT 828, and CSXT 7774 were leading the train.  Photograph taken on September 1