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Description
When I was a kid, my folks moved from the Oakland section of Pittsburgh out to Harmar Township in the Allegheny Valley. They didn't know it at the time but they had just created a Rail Fan. The Pennsylvania Railroad's Conemaugh Division ran through Harmarville, it serviced Harmar Coal Mine and other local businesses like Red Raven Pop, they even had their own station! The twin tracks were always busy, much to my teachers chagrin at Harmar Elementary School not to mention Fr. Dempsey's Sunday morning surmons at St. Francis church! I loved to watch those big dirty dark green Pennsy locomotives with their bright red & white keystones hauling ass with their Screaming Banshee air horns blaring at every crossing, what a sound as they rumbled by! Then one day all that changed and all the beautiful red keystones got painted over and replaced with Penn Central "PC" logos. I didn't know anything about mergers and bankruptcies, I just knew my keystones were gone and a new railroad was in town with weird green cabin cars and funny hastily painted snake like logos on the locomotives and cars. Almost as suddenly years later, it seemed like all the railroads in the northeast were in trouble or bankrupt and the government stepped in and a new railroad was formed called Conrail (Consolidated Rail Corporation). Suddenly I was seeing all different locomotives from all the fallen northeast roads with again hastily painted CR's and then came the electric Locomotives and cabin cars (caboose). I didn't know what to make of all this, but the new Conrail blue locomotives started to grow on me and there was still all the fallen flags still rolling around the system to add some variety. I never really liked the Conrail logo till I heard that the crews called it the "Surf's Up" logo and suddenly that was OK too. These guys running Conrail turned a mess into a first class railroad!

Today the Blue cabin cars are gone and Conrail has been divided up between CSX and Norfolk Southern, but that's another story. For a while we'll still get to see Conrail Quality Blue, but slowly but surely it's giving way to boring black & white and CSX blue and gold. For me now it's always a thrill to see one of those pretty blue Geeps or GE's on NS or CSX freight train and I think to myself, enjoy it now and take pictures because soon it will all be gone.

Adobe Illustrator CS, Apple G5 Power Mac, OSX Tiger

Description
When I was a kid, my folks moved from the Oakland section of Pittsburgh out to Harmar Township in the Allegheny Valley. They didn't know it at the time but they had just created a Rail Fan. The Pennsylvania Railroad's Conemaugh Division ran through Harmarville, it serviced Harmar Coal Mine and other local businesses like Red Raven Pop, they even had their own station! The twin tracks were always busy, much to my teachers chagrin at Harmar Elementary School not to mention Fr. Dempsey's Sunday morning surmons at St. Francis church! I loved to watch those big dirty dark green Pennsy locomotives with their bright red & white keystones hauling ass with their Screaming Banshee air horns blaring at every crossing, what a sound as they rumbled by! Then one day all that changed and all the beautiful red keystones got painted over and replaced with Penn Central "PC" logos. I didn't know anything about mergers and bankruptcies, I just knew my keystones were gone and a new railroad was in town with weird green cabin cars and funny hastily painted snake like logos on the locomotives and cars. Almost as suddenly years later, it seemed like all the railroads in the northeast were in trouble or bankrupt and the government stepped in and a new railroad was formed called Conrail (Consolidated Rail Corporation). Suddenly I was seeing all different locomotives from all the fallen northeast roads with again hastily painted CR's and then came the electric Locomotives and cabin cars (caboose). I didn't know what to make of all this, but the new Conrail blue locomotives started to grow on me and there was still all the fallen flags still rolling around the system to add some variety. I never really liked the Conrail logo till I heard that the crews called it the "Surf's Up" logo and suddenly that was OK too. These guys running Conrail turned a mess into a first class railroad!

Today the Blue cabin cars are gone and Conrail has been divided up between CSX and Norfolk Southern, but that's another story. For a while we'll still get to see Conrail Quality Blue, but slowly but surely it's giving way to boring black & white and CSX blue and gold. For me now it's always a thrill to see one of those pretty blue Geeps or GE's on NS or CSX freight train and I think to myself, enjoy it now and take pictures because soon it will all be gone.

Adobe Illustrator CS, Apple G5 Power Mac, OSX Tiger