Outside the Wire

Me and my herd o' womens went to NYC to see some English-ters put on a production of Macbeth and see the stuff that is cool while we were there. I have been in enough big cities in other parts of the country to have some preconceived notions of what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised, it was a nice place to hang out for several days. Some musings from the trip:

Traveling to the big city by trains is cool.

There's a tremendous amount of abandoned real estate along the railways between DC and NYC.

I know the railways don't always travel through the best parts of cities, but I never expected Baltimore to be such a dump ... wow ... sketchy-town USA.

We may have been the only English-speaking tourists there.

City folk don't like city noises so they all wear earphones when they are outside.

The Walk/Don't Walk signs don't really mean Walk/Don't Walk.

During the World Cup season - and only then - you can wear safety-green or day-glo-orange shoes without folk chuckling at you.

Men can wear skinny jeans if they roll the legs up past the ankle and pair them with brightly colored leather dress shoes ... we saw lots of red ones. The exception is when wearing black leather skinny jeans which must be tucked into high-top tennis shoes.

The yellow ones don't stop.

Europeans think jorts are cool.

I was never overly concerned for our safety at any time we were there.

Navigating the city was very easy because most streets are numbered, not named; traveling on the subway was fine.

Go to Times Square one time - just to say you've been there - then don't waste your time going back. The same goes for Central Park ...meh.

Josh from FACTs was in NYC at the same time ... he was in Manhattan when we were uptown and vice versa tho.

I still don't like Shakespeare plays, even when done by a legit knight and Amy Pond's daughter.

NYC has a bunch of gorgeous old churches that were completely surrounded by super-tall, super-modern buildings.

There's a 75% chance that we might have seen two famous people.

When we were at the Top of the Rock there was no tremendous feeling of being up high, I suspect because the things that were close to us were also pretty tall. I couldn't see my house from there.

I opted to take my GoPro camera instead of my Nikon and it turned out to be a mixed bag. While I definitely enjoyed not having to lug the size and weight of the Nikon, I definitely missed having exposure and zoom control. The GoPro is quite amazing for it's size but it's no match for a real DSLR for still shots. I had to get a little heavy-handed with knocking down the exposure to reduce the glare in a lot of these, a polarizer would have been most helpful.

Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island ferry.

Lower Manhattan from the Staten Island ferry.

Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Lower Manhattan.

Entrance to the Cloisters.

Garden in the Cloisters.

Back of the Cloisters

The Freedom Tower.

The Empire State Building.

Emily and Me at the 9/11 Memorial.

Threesies

UPDATE (06/04/14):

The 1070 Wabash & 8099 Southern made a return trip on Wednesday leading 202 back to Pa. This time it would be a daylight run in the early afternoon so I burned a few hours of PTO to get some decent shots. I started back in Jonesborough then made the drive to Bluff City to snap a few as it crossed Boone Lake. The results this time were muchly gooder.

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This past weekend saw more of the Norfolk Southern Heritage engines move through Jonesborough than any 3 day period since I've been looking for them. None of the three were new heritage motors for me but the 8105 Interstate coming through on Sunday afternoon was a much better photo op than the night shots I'd got last year.

So this past Thursday afternoon I learned the Interstate would be traveling through on 22A ... but - there's always a but - it was going to be late evening and the forecast was for rain. It was delayed getting into Bristol and then the skies opened up. No photo ops tonight, but there's always a chance it will be sent back on the 23G.

I also learned that both the 1070 Wabash and the 8099 Southern were on 201 ... but ... - there's that but again - it too was going to be a late evening run but at least it wasn't supposed to rain. I'd not seen a single train with two Heritage otors so I really wanted a shot at this one. It was on time toward Bristol until the train ahead of it went into emergency and caused a 45 minute delay. And at this time of day it's a quality 45 minutes of light. So when 201 finally left Bristol it was 8:30 which put it in Jonesborough at 9:15 ... with nothing but street lamps for light. The image below was taken at the highest ISO that's reasonable on my camera and some LR and Photoshop magic applied I got an image that only kinda stinks if you don't look too close. Maybe they'll send it back on the 202.

Norfolk Southern 1070 Wabash and 8099 Southern, Jonesborough, TN (06/01/14)

A Dirty Creamsicle.

The Interstate was indeed scheduled to return on the 23G, and it would be leading on the this trip. Thanks to the facing book trains groups I had a pretty good idea when it would get back to Jonesborough. The only other time I've seen this motor was a rainy night last summer so I was anxious to see it during a daytime run and get some good shots. Several folk on the facing book mentioned that it was very dirty and there was even some "PC" (for Penn Central) drawn into a couple of the dirty white areas. I guess the fact that's got as much white in the paint scheme makes it hard to keep clean, but dang, would it hurt to run it through a car wash once in a while ?

 

Norfolk Southern 8105 Interstate, Jonesborough, TN (06/01/14)

... and the obligatory butt shot - look closely and you can see the PC in the dirty white paint near the numbers.

Norfolk Southern 8105 Interstate, Jonesborough, TN (06/01/14)

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Neither of these were new heritage engines, still at 14 of 20.

#00  1030 The Forgotten Heritage Engine
#13  1065  Savannah and Atlanta

        1066  New York Central

        1067  Reading
#12  1068  Erie
  #1  1069  Virginian
  #8  1070  Wabash
        1071  Central RR of New Jersey
#11  1072  Illinois Terminal
  #4  1073  Penn Central
        1074  Lackawanna
        8025  Monongahela
  #2  8098  Conrail

#10  8099  Southern
  #5  8100  Nickel Plate Road
  #7  8101  Central of Georgia

  #9  8102  Pennsylvania

 #14 8103  Norfolk and Western
  #3  8104  Lehigh Valley

  #6  8105  Interstate

        8114  Norfolk Southern

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This is not a new Special Interest engine for me.

#1 6920 Honoring Our Veterans

#2 6963 GoRail

#3 Southern 630