{"id":44236,"date":"2026-05-12T06:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=44236"},"modified":"2026-05-11T21:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T01:00:28","slug":"coal-train-headend-dpu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/coal-train-headend-dpu\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal Train Headend & DPU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Massive double coal trains typically work Norfolk Southern’s Port Road Secondary with two units on the headend and a remote pair mid-train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had rolled NS 622 by Riverfront Park in Marietta, Pa., then followed it east to Columbia, where I made this sequence of the train looming out of the darkness and passing the signals at the east end of Cola interlocking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the headend, I had my N6-III mounted on a 3Pod tripod, which kept it steady, allowing for the setting to remain sharp despite the relatively inky gloom while the locomotive display a bit of motion blur. When the mid-train DPUs approached, I opted for a hand-held pan sequence which kept the locomotives sharp while the setting blurred. I like the panned photos better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Norfolk Southern 4876 leads train 622 at Cola.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tracking the Light explores darkness.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made this sequence of Norfolk Southern 622 looming out of the darkness and passing the signals at the east end of Cola interlocking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[7626,4547,5383,8522],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/NS_622_Cola_Columbia_PA\u00a9BrianSolomon_DSC_1772-DxO_DeepPRIME-3.jpg?fit=2048%2C1161&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-bvu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44244,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions\/44244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}