October had been pleasantly warm in Pennsylvania, so it was a bit of shock when we arrived at Lilly near the summit of the Alleghenies to find it was a raw 27F! Luckily we’d packed some long sleeves.

Crisp cool air carries the sound well, and long before the headlight came into view, Kris and I could hear this heavy eastward Norfolk Southern freight laboring up the ‘West Slope’.

Years ago, I would have used my telephoto lenses to frame an eastward train beneath the classic PRR signal bridge that once stood at Lilly, but this was removed a few years ago when NS resignaled the line.

Notwithstanding, this is still a neat place to watch a train clawing its way upgrade. This was a monster. In addition to locomotives at the headend, there was a mid-train ‘DPU’ (radio remote control distributed power unit), and a helper at the back.

I made these photos using my Nikon Z cameras. This was the first of several trains we caught that cool morning. Soon the sun was over the ridgeline and we continued a wonderful day of photography!

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