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'PRR' reporting marks were used to denote ex-Conrail locos and rolling stock that were going to NS in the split; if it was meant for CSX it was stenciled 'NYC'. My guess is that someone somewhere had an interlocked PRR stencil handy and got a little fancy with it as a sort of last hurrah.

Yes, the echo. The way they just trail off is fantastic. The 2021 edition is a favorite, with less background noise to contend with and a little bit of gloom in the morning for ambience.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

I agree. Both the Heisler and the Climax are in the shop right now, so this year's Parade of Steam was all Shays. I would like to see it one year when all 3 types are operating.

​​@@FastFlyingVirginianyea i saw the Parade of steam this year online. I hope to see that one day too. All 3 types. Cass is just an amazing place nowhere in the World like it.

You're welcome! I'm glad I made this one count, because I will probably never see such a thing again. If I do, I am playing the Powerball the same day because the odds would surely be in my favor. 😁

That's true, I was too distracted by the posts on social media about it being 42 years since the NS merger to notice. 😁

It was a great set of circumstances to capture the sound - no cars waiting at the crossing on my side, no traffic noise from Route 53, not even much of a breeze. I kept the horn part on my phone for a while as a ringtone.

Certainly higher Amtrak frequency than the NS Pittsburgh Line. 😁 It's the complete Amtrak gamut - regionals, long distance, and the Auto Train thrown in for good measure. Any under-representation of CSX is largely my fault, as I did miss several freights throughout the day for one reason or another.

Thanks for the support! Lately I haven't been as well-traveled and prolific as I'd like to be for various reasons, but I'm optimistic that will be changing soon. I've considered trying narration before, but it's a whole other set of challenges - scripting, having enough B-roll to talk over, getting a clean take of narration recorded in the 'studio', and so on. It's a lot of production overhead to do it well, and I have nothing but admiration for the big name channels that knock the narration ball out of the park, knowing how much work goes into getting it right. Besides the production challenges, I feel like the silent approach fills a niche for those who don't like a lot of chatter. Watching videos from other channels that do narration, I saw a number of comments along the lines of 'great video, but I wish we could hear more of the train'. I knew I must be getting the ambient sound thing right when I noticed some of my videos popping up in ASMR playlists. 😁 That said, I've got plenty of narration inspiration to draw on if I feel like trying my hand at it sometime, train-related or no - Jeremy Clarkson, Anthony Bourdain, Michael Palin (think 'Great Railway Journeys Of The World'), and Mike Bednar (John Pechulis Media) all come to mind. Now that I think about it, many people have told me I have a face for radio.

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@FastFlyingVirginianOh I completely understand the production challenges and I do appreciate the videos without narration.. heck I make all my videos without narration or any editing really. However; You’ve been doing these videos for so long I thought maybe it’d be worth trying it sometime in the future. I wish the Algorithm could push these videos out more. Mike Bednar is a personal favorite of mine also; that real deep voice tells ya he’s seen it all.

I had a few years there where I could ride an algorithm wave from around November to June, but nothing like that in a while, unfortunately. I'm not totally opposed to the idea of narration, I just don't want to put something out if I can't get it as close as possible to what I think I'd want a narrated clip of mine to look (and sound) like. Maybe if I gargle some gravel and really get the Bednar impersonation down, I could narrate one of my old vids for April Fool's or something, back when I didn't even have a scanner and only the vaguest notion of train IDs.

Yes indeed, it was a good time. Less rain, more trains next year.

Now I'm going to have to rewatch your vid and match up angles to figure out where I was. 😁

@@FastFlyingVirginian Alright! 😁

I'm glad I took the shot when I did. It's been the only opportunity I ever had to shoot GEs throttling out from overhead since, even with trips to the 8th St. bridge over Rose Yard in Altoona or the 'Railfan Bridge' at Enola Yard outside Harrisburg.

Forget crickets - idling SD80MACs, SD40-2s, and SD40Es were a great summertime soundtrack for relaxing on the porch of the Station Inn in Cresson back in the day.

The platform is not that height for the entire length. On the station-side platform it ramps up north of the station, and on the opposite side the height change starts a little further south. On the raised sections the conductor doesn't need to use the step box.

Thanks, it was a pleasure meeting you. I'm glad I got out the day before Train Day like I did, in light of the underwhelming weather the day of.

L134 is usually a healthier consist, but every now and then the power runs light one direction.

It's been a little while since I've been up there, so I'll be curious to see how the RJC power has changed when I make another trip. Hopefully this fall.

Well now that you've jinxed it... 😂 It's a fairly safe bet I'll be there. Hopefully it's better weather than this year.

This was much longer ago than I thought without looking at the date. Time's flying.

24 fps was intentional. The intent is to mimic the framerate of motion picture film, but it depends on being able to match the framerate with a slow shutter speed. On my Canon I can lock the shutter speed to 1/48 and get a nice, natural-looking blur to the motion. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to do that yet on the Pixel 8 Pro. Third-party camera apps do offer the option to lock the shutter speed, but in my testing so far it seems that Google plays games with the camera API and the third party apps can only manage mono sound on the Pixel 8 Pro, while the default app does stereo just fine, so it's kind of a toss-up at the moment as to which app to use. Hopefully the third-party devs can sort things out and I won't have to settle for mono sound in favor of better shutter control. For comparison, my video of Ashland Train Day 2023 was done in 24p entirely on the Canon, as was my footage of the 2023 Cass Parade Of Steam.

Lots more of 2 in my Cass Parade Of Steam videos if you haven't seen them already. 😁

Thanks. The area stretching from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh is jam-packed with railfanning points of interest. If you are particularly interested in the mountainous portion of the line, Cresson is a good spot to base a visit and then spiral out from there to other locations.

It was this same trip when I saw the Conrail and Pennsylvania heritage units for the first time. Someone had coupled a steam locomotive in front of them though. Nickel Plate 7-something-something. 😁

@@FastFlyingVirginianThat’s the NKP 765, my best friend LOVES that thing

Thanks. I try not to take things that seem common in the present for granted. They'll eventually become uncommon and then disappear, but then I can look back at all the times I recorded some locomotive or signal or whatever and remember.

I miss the CR 'rainbow' era myself, although I was so young then my parents wouldn't trust me to handle a camera correctly and not waste film. Now I'm making up for lost time.

@@FastFlyingVirginian Ode to Big Blue.

@@FastFlyingVirginian "The rainbow era" Was that what Conrail was when it was formed in 1976?

Yes, the early years where most locomotives and cars had not been painted Conrail blue yet. If you want some good viewing of that timeframe, I highly recommend checking out John Pechulis Media's 'Conrail's Kaleidoscope Years' series. His 'Railfanning With The Bednars' series volumes 6-10 also feature plenty of early CR action.

I'd seen the news about the barriers, but I was under the impression they were just there to keep people from crossing to the other side, which I never did anyway. I do love the echo at this spot, I need to go through my Tipton footage and find another example. There were sometimes when it sounded as if there was a second train coming.