Tag Archives: #New Holland Secondary

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Grab Shot on the New Holland Secondary

I was running errands. On my way back to the apartment, I found that Greenfield Road under Amtrak’s Harrisburg Line was closed—likely as result of flooding from the recent rains—so I detoured around via Willow Road. On my way, I heard Norfolk Southern’s New Holland local sounding for a crossing.

I approached Willow Road (in greater Lancaster) with haste. With my Lumix LX7 in hand, I pulled over in time to see theNS local freight approaching. I didn’t have much time to set the camera. So, I zoomed in, framed up my photo and exposed a series of digital images.

The first two were the best.

When I got home I discovered that the camera was set to record in JPG rather than RAW. That’s not the end of the world, but not having a RAW file greatly limits the ability to make adjustments.

In this case, it doesn’t matter much, December morning sun produces excellent lighting conditions with very good contrast and color.

I’ve scaled the best of the sequence for presentation here, but the photo is otherwise unaltered, and appears basically as it looked right out of the camera.

I was home about 5 minutes after I made this photo.

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New Holland Vignettes

On Sunday Norfolk Southern runs local H29 over the old Pennsylvania New Holland Branch to it’s namesake.

Last Sunday, Kris and I wandered out along the line, looked at few crossings, and upon reaching New Holland, PA found a pair of GP38-2s with a few freight cars. The crew was just performing a brake test,

We drove a west and parked in the lot at the New Holland post office and waited.

This location offered a relatively unobstructed view the tracks.

After a few minutes the westward local came along and I made a series of photos with my Nikon Z6.

An Amish buggy passes the old Leola, PA station.
NS H29 Local freight in New Holland, PA. Nikon Z6 with f2.8 Nikkor 180mm telephoto.
NS H29 Local freight in New Holland, PA. Nikon Z6 with f2.8 Nikkor 180mm telephoto. A wink of sun makes the photo.
NS H29 at Diller Avenue in New Holland. Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.

Sunday on the Branch with Tracking the Light!

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Hartman Station Road on the New Holland Secondary.

While runing a few errands, I found Norfolk Southern’s H29 local working its outbound run on the New Holland Secondary.

Leading the train was Norfolk Southern SD40E 6307 (originally an SD50) , which was making quite a show of climbing the short grade away from Greenfield in Lancaster, PA.

I zipped up to Hartman Station Road for a few quick photos using my Lumix LX7.

Step back a century and imagine this was one of PRR’s H10s 2-8-0 Consolidations. Now that would have been cool.

NS H29 working east at Hartman Station Road, Lancaster, PA. Lumix LX7 photo.

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Score on the New Holland Secondary

Last Sunday morning, Kris and I were heading to breakfast. Rather than jump on the four-lane, I decided to stick to the two-lane roads. As we drove toward the Greenfield Road grade crossing in Lancaster, PA, the crossing flashers lit.

I was surprise to see Norfolk Southern’s New Holland local approaching. We didn’t know this ran on Sunday morning.

After pulling in the clear, I grabbed my Nikon Z6 and fired off a photo of the approaching freight. Unfortunately, in my haste I’d set the auto focus-point incorrectly and my result wasn’t worth the price of the exposed pixels. (It was garbage).

From this mistake, I decided to delay breakfast and we turned around, and zipped up to the Willow Road crossing, just a couple of miles down the line. Here I had ample time to set up and frame some photos. I’d sorted out the auto focus. Kris filmed a video with her iPhone.

I was pleased with these images. We’ll need to head out on a Sunday morning again soon!

Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm Z-series zoom.
Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm Z-series zoom.
Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm Z-series zoom.
Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm Z-series zoom.

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