Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Harrisburg

This is my latest, and maybe last, photo of a locomotive still in Conrail colors pulling a regular freight train. This is in PRR (in the sense of Norfolk Southern, I don't know historically speaking) territory near (or in) Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Because I took this from a car it's slightly blurred and so I can't get the number, but I think that this locomotive is a GP38, as it has two radiator fans, and Conrail had few GP38-2's, and no SD38's (which would have longer frames anyway).

This concrete viaduct is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and carries a railroad line over the Susquehanna River. Incidentally, this isn't the famous Rockville Bridge where an accident occurred (containers blown off a freight train in a blizzard) the day after I took this. That bridge is considerably north of this one, and stone, in addition to having three fewer arches. It probably isn't visible in this photo. Therefore, this would be the Philadelphia & Reading bridge, built in 1924 named for the railroad that built it, which became the Reading Company later that year, being merged into Conrail in 1976, passing to Norfolk Southern in the Conrail breakup of 1997, meaning that Norfolk Southern are the current operators. Visible behind this bridge in the water are the ruins of some piers from the South Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, started, but never completed, in 1884.

Here's the station building in Harrisburg. I don't know the date of construction, but it's obviously from the 1920s or 1930s, and built by the Pennsylvania Railroad. It now hosts primarily Amtrak passenger services.

Here's a shot of Amtrak #166 (on the left), which is a G.E. Genesis P42 diesel, and an unidentified AEM7 (on the right), coupled to some Amfleet cars at Harrisburg. The sign in the foreground is, of course, the station sign, sporting the post-1999 Amtrak logo.

I didn't do too much train watching on my most recent trip to the U.S., but I did manage to snap some pictures in Harrisburg on my way through. These material handling cars are used by Amtrak for mail and parcels, and are coupled to Amtrak's regular trains. Basically converted boxcars his makes them the fastest boxcars, and the fastest non-passenger cars, in the U.S., as some operate (in mail service) as fast as 110 m.p.h.