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Perfect Light at Lancaster Junction!

Over the last couple of years I’ve paid a few brief visits to Lancaster Junction. This was once a significant divergence on Reading Company’s Reading & Columbia route.

Last week, after departing Manheim having photographed Norfolk Southern’s H23 local freight, I droved directly to Lancaster Junction ahead of the train.

Track speed on NS’s Lititz Branch is a little fast than a jog, so I arrived a solid five minutes ahead of the train. While waiting I met a local historian who showed me where the old station had once stood and other vestiges of this once fascinating place.

I’m thinking that Lancaster Junction might be a neat place to put on my reincarnated ‘Wee Reading Company’ which hopefully will begin to take shape in our basement.

Below are a few historical USGS topo maps the show the Junction at various times (1904 and 1990s).

Lancaster Junction, Pa, from a 1904 USGS topo map. Note the small yard on the leg of the wye heading toward Lancaster.
This 1990s era map shows the now-abandoned alignment of the Reading & Columbia line toward Columbia, Pa. This section is now a rail-trail. The location of my photos below were taken from the area represented by the red-cross and circle on this late-era map. It is a place well suited to early afternoon early winter sunlight. Today there are no switches or sidings remaining at the junction and the station building are but a memory.

When the H23 began to sound its horn for the Auction Road crossing, I was all set with my Nikon Z6 and my father’s old M4 loaded with Ektachrome 100. A puffy cloud was threatening to darken the scene, but this cleared off by the time the locomotives loomed into view. With the digital camera, I made photos that capture the scene as much as the train itself, while the lone color slide was more about the locomotives.

I made this sequence of photos, gave the locomotive engineer a friendly wave, parted company with my new friend, and then plotted my course for the next place to roll by H23. The Ektachrome slide will have to wait for another day, as it will need processing.

As the train approached a puffy cloud was tickling the sun, but it cleared off by the time the locomotives walked by me.

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