Downtown Train

I have many memories of freight trains, growing up along the New York Central line in northern Pennsylvania. That, and the fact that my grandfather and uncle worked for the railroads, helped me fall in love with the rails. One year we took a plane to New York to visit the family in Brooklyn. But we experienced air sickness on the trip to NYC so we came home by train. That sealed it.

Over the years I have had several friends who shared my love of trains and would be out doing what is called "railfanning"- chasing trains, taking pictures and just enjoying the majesty and power of those engines and the call of the railroad. I have often lived not far from train tracks, even having c cabin along the Penn Central line in the wilderness of the Pine Creek Gorge in Pennsylvania. I have had a number of interesting train trips of my own as an adult. The distant call of the train whistle is irresistible.

A couple weeks ago I was downtown on the top level of the parking garage when that whistle came echoing through the buildings. One of the local switcher trains was coming. I was in a good location to get some video, so I pulled out my trusty iPhone and started taking the video. I went home and did some editing, added a bluegrass song (of course!) and came up with a 1:11 view of a downtown train.

Enjoy- and one of these days I may make another one with all the train pictures I have from the past 60 years.