Heading West

Last night after work and after I checked into the hotel, I was thinking about where I wanted to go an shoot.  Northern New Jersey was graced with blue, cloudless skies, and a sun that was setting a little after 7PM.  Where could I go to take advantage of this nearly perfect golden hour light?  Well, instead of picking the low hanging fruit and heading down the street to Bound Brook or Manville, I decided to head further west.  Yep, I made the nearly 60 minute trek west to Bethlehem, PA to see what I could come up with.

The trip west took a bit longer than I had hoped – the usual traffic backups on the way.  Of course the scanner was on the entire trip out, and as I got closer to the Bethlehem exit on I78, the scanner started picking up NS activity.  It sounded like a westbound NS job was rolling through Bethlehem towards Allentown Yard.  Damn…and I was still about 10 minutes out.  Oh, well – I’m here, so I figured I’d head to the New Street bridge and see what I could see.  Maybe there would be another train around soon.

I got there and was greeted with some beautiful light, but nary a train in sight.  The closest thing was a couple strings of cars that LVRM dropped for NS to pick up.  I even missed them…

While pacing back & forth across the bridge, I got a couple shots.  One was of the CP-Bethlehem signal with the old Bethlehem Steel plant in the background.

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Then from over the Lehigh River, a shot of Bethlehem, PA

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With that done, I continued my pacing back & forth across the bridge.  It was better than sitting there freezing with the constant 15-20MPH wind.  After about 20 minutes, something interesting came across the scanner – a detector at what sounded like milepost 82.  Hmmm, thinking a minute, CP-88 was just below the bridge I was on, putting a train 6 miles from where I was standing.  Now the question was, is the train east or westbound?

A few minutes later, I got my answer – off in the distance appeared a trio of headlights on a black NS widecab locomotive.  listening to the scanner again, it sounded like it was NS train 33K pulling into view, preparing to head to Allentown Yard.  Of course, I got a series of shots of the train progressing along the tracks, with the Bethlehem Steel plant as a backdrop.

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After that, I found my way down to get a couple closer shots of the old blast furnaces.

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By that time, the shadows were getting quite long as the sun set in the west, and I called it a day.  Pretty satisfied with what I got, I hit I78 east, and headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Thanks for looking!
Tom