On the Montour Railroad in 1975

September 29, 1975 near Cecil Twp, PA

In May of 1975 I was still a grad student in Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department when I had a chance to ride the last passenger train over the Western Maryland from Connellsville, PA to near Hancock, MD. More about that later, but one of the great things about that trip is that I first met two people who were to become good friends as a result of it. Bill Metzger ("Map of the Month" in Trains Magazine) and Ivan Abrams had been chasing the train all day and we met when it stopped at Ohiopyle for a photo opportunity.

I spent much of my next year in Pittsburgh (when I wasn't working on my Ph.D. thesis) with these guys taking pictures of trains all over the area. The above shot is one of my favorites taken near McDonald trestle. Much of the Montour is now a rail trail, and in fact this line became part of one, but a section of the it has been restored (alas without the tree) as the Westland Branch to serve a Marcellus Shale-based chemical plant.

The Montour Trail Council owns the ROW outright and got a new parallel trail out of it plus a very nice annual endowment.  The WLE operates the line now.

NKP 765 in Indiana, October 27, 2013

NKP 765 near Fort Wayne, IN

In late October, 2013 the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society ran a pair of excursions from Fort Wayne to Lafayette, Indiana and return pulled by 2-8-4 Nickel Plate 765. The trip was announced in August with tickets going on sale Labor Day weekend. It sold out within 36 hours but I was able to get tickets for myself and my friends Rick and Jane Moser, and Dave Ingles.

We met in Fort Wayne on October 25 and rode the round trip on Saturday, October 26. (We generally follow the rule that if there are two identical trips one should ride the first one because something might keep the second one from running.)

As we left Fort Wayne I kept an eye out the dome window for a possible photo location for Sunday. I soon noted one and used MotionX GPS to mark it on a map on my iPad. I only had time for this one shot because I had to be back in the Pittsburgh area that afternoon for a college presentation with my (then) high school junior daughter. The result is the shot above.

My friends headed back towards Chicago on Sunday and managed to get additional pictures of the train on the way. It was a fun, though short, weekend and a good chance to catch up with my friends.