If I’ve recommended this young man’s work on this Forum yet so I’m doing it now.
It’s a YouTube site called North Jersey Aerial Rail. His specialty is drone footage of various railroads in the area and his photography is quite amazing! If you’re from that part of the country you’ll see the area in a way you never have before and in many cases it’s quite mesmerizing. Give him a look!
Definitely. a different perspective…[swg]
At least ‘the newer generations’ are attacking our hobbies with their ‘technologies’;it is interesting to see all this from a newer angle. I hope it will grow on all us Old Geezers! [(-D]
Thanks, WAYNE! [bow]
You’re welcome Sam! It strikes me that railfanning is constantly evolving and North Jersey Aerial Rail is a good example of this. In a way he reminds me of the photographic work of the late Bob Malinoski. Bob didn’t just catch the trains, he seemed to be a master of picturing the trains in the context of their environment and young Mister North Jersey’s taken this to another level.
The hobby’s in safe hands!
Railfaning has to understand the full context of railroad operations in that it is a ongoing economic undertaking that must serve customers and make money doing so. Little used branches with little to no traffic, no matter how scenic they may be.
As a 51+ year 1:1 railroader I look back and see many of the locations and lines that I worked during that career either no longer have tracks laid down, have tracks but no service or have had their title conveyed to short lines or regional lines. The rail landscape is forever changing. Major customer come and major customers close. Major commodities flower and major commodities wither and die. Ever changing.
Yes it is!
Thanks.
The fanning preference is for social activities like high volume “hotspots”, chases of heritage units or steam excursions, and museums. Pretty much everything else gets ignored and left for the rivet counters and historians.
U.S. rail fandom seems perpetually fixed to 1962 in the same manner that UK hobbyists prefer the Big Four era (1920s). I used to think this was generational, but idk, maybe scale modeling drives much of that interest and discourse?
Don Ball Jr. noted that J. Parker Lamb didn’t much care for chasing the last of steam and was happy to photo-document what was in front of him. Which counts for much of the historical value of his collection.
One of my favorite railroad books when I was 8 or 9 was a ‘picture book’ of typical railroad action that could be seen within about a 100-mile radius of New York City on one particular day in 1949. This was stuff actually happening, not railfan train-chasing, and contained both ancient and modern steam as well as ‘the state of the art’ in early practical dieselization. (I have not been able to find this book again, and it isn’t the Carleton Railbooks ‘Gotham’, good though that book be).
These North Jersey videos are the 21st-Century equivalent of that sort of documentation. How wonderful it would have been to have this technology available for the railroading of the early transition era!
You’re welcome! Let me tell you, not long after I found North Jersey Aerial Rail I set aside an evening and binge-watched it! Time well spent!
Oh, and this young man seems to be well aware of the old show business adage:
“Always leave them wanting more!”
You said it! When I watched his CSX River Sub (Old West Shore) videos the thought kept crossing my mind of “Imagine if he could have been there in the 1940s when New York Central Pacifics, Mikados, Mohawks, Hudsons, and the very occasional Niagara were running there!”
Or in the late '50s… when I actually lived a mile or two away… when all the passenger power was Baldwins, and most of the freight power still lightning-striped? Or in the early '70s when you still could find F-units in some consists?
Two things in particular I mourn we can’t get. One is the ‘Broadway’ visible from PA 115 close to Wilkes-Barre, which as late as the '60s was alive with all sorts of interesting and exotic things. The other is the ability to do a drone overflight, with full sound recording, of one of the U34CH trains on the Pascack Valley line: honorary steam by nearly any definition we might use.
Without a sound economic underpinning there aren’t any railroads. You can’t have one without the other.
In my 51+ railroad career, I worked at and on a plethora of lines and locations that are no longer railroad points or lines because their economics failed between back then and now.
As an optional or co-factor for lines abandoned, is it just possible that poor decisions by management (lack of imagination as Ken Greyhounds and Don Oltmann have pointed out many times, incompetence) and other external factors share responsibility?
You have reoeatedly said you distrust statistics. Yet you seem willing to blame rail shrinkage on an applied disipline based on some statistics and some theories while the rail usage likely ignores a major component of the modern field: behavioral econ.
Also, resources are limited. Have to try to direct them toward their best use.
Most of the ‘shrinkage’ has been from the rationalization of nearly parallel routes to serve the remaining business which was severly shrunk when the carriers as a group decided to no longer seek the one and two car shipper/consignees and implemented at rate structure that rewarded larger shipper/consignees. Throw on top of that the 2007-2009 financial crisis that overtook the automobile industry and in the areas I worked closed assembly plants at Lordstown, Baltimore, Wilsmere for GM as well as Chrysler’s Newark, DE plant.
I hired out on the B&O St. Louis Division - the branch from North Vernon to Louisville was abandoned in favor of an agreement to operate over the L&I from Seymour to Louisville. There is no through service between Cincinnati and St. Louis, with the line between Lawrenceville and Caseyville, IL being taken out of service. The branch line between Shawneetown and Beardstown through Flora and Springfield has been abandoned. On the Pittsburgh Division, the P&W
Little bit of a sustained quality issue I should say at that plant over it’s history.
[quote user=“BaltACD”]
charlie hebdo
BaltACD
In my 51+ railroad career, I worked at and on a plethora of lines and locations that are no longer railroad points or lines because their economics failed between back then and now.As an optional or co-factor for lines abandoned, is it just possible that poor decisions by management (lack of imagination as Ken Greyhounds and Don Oltmann have pointed out many times, incompetence) and other external factors share responsibility?
You have reoeatedly said you distrust statistics. Yet you seem willing to blame rail shrinkage on an applied disipline based on some statistics and some theories while the rail usage likely ignores a major component of the modern field: behavioral econ.
Most of the ‘shrinkage’ has been from the rationalization of nearly parallel routes to serve the remaining business which was severly shrunk when the carriers as a group decided to no longer seek the one and two car shipper/consignees and implemented at rate structure that rewarded larger shipper/consignees. Throw on top of that the 2007-2009 financial crisis that overtook the automobile industry and in the areas I worked closed assembly plants at Lordstown, Baltimore, Wilsmere for GM as well as Chrysler’s Newark, DE plant.
I hired out on the B&O St. Louis Division - the branch from North Vernon to Louisville was abandoned in favor of an agreement to operate over the L&I from Seymour to Louisville. There is no through service between Cincinnati and St. Louis, with the line between Lawrenceville and Caseyville, IL being tak
If the United Railroad Historical Society can get Erie-Lackawanna 3372 running again, and they’re optimistic they can, you may just get your wish!