{"id":3646,"date":"2013-08-31T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T10:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=3646"},"modified":"2013-08-24T17:50:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T21:50:33","slug":"rj-corman-on-the-old-beech-creek-september-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/rj-corman-on-the-old-beech-creek-september-1997\/","title":{"rendered":"RJ Corman on the old Beech Creek, September 1997"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Coal Train in Central Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

On my external hard drive I have a file of photos called \u2018Miscellaneous US Railroads\u2019. I picked this photo at random. I thought it’s a neat image. Only after, I selected it, did I learn the the owner of the railroad, R.J. Corman himself, had very recently passed away. Odd how that works.<\/p>\n

\"RJ<\/a>
An RJ Corman<\/a> empty coal train works compass south from the Conrail<\/a> interchange at Keating, Pennsylvania<\/a> on September 8, 1997. This line follows the West Branch of the Susquehanna River<\/a> through some exceptionally isolated rural areas of central Pennsylvania\u2014scores at least \u2018five banjoes\u2019. Exposed with a Nikon N90S on Kodachrome 25.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in September 1997, Mike Gardner and I were on one of our many \u201cPA Trips\u201d. (In case you didn\u2019t know, \u2018PA\u2019 is the postcode for Pennsylvania). While we would usually head to the former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line<\/a> for a ‘traffic fix\u2019, often we\u2019d then take time to suss out less-traveled lines.<\/p>\n

On this day we called into Clearfield (the base for RJ Corman operations on former Conrail branches known as the \u2018Clearfield Cluster<\/a>\u2019) , where we had a chat with some railroaders. They told us that a crew was called to take set of engines up to the Conrail connection at Keating to collect an empty coal train.<\/p>\n

So armed with this knowledge we made a day (or at least a morning) of following RJ Corman\u2019s former New York Central Beech Creek line. This traverses some very remote territory and access to the tracks is limited.<\/p>\n

I made this photo a few miles south of Keating of the returning train. It was one of the few times I caught an RJ Corman train on the move.<\/p>\n

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