It's Partly Sunny and Windy in Philadephia

Frank writes...

For the third and final part of my trip report from the Heritage Rail Alliance convention, here are a few photos of the railfanning trip David and I took to Philadelphia on the Friday of the trip. I would have taken more photos but they're all modern cars and I didn't want to waste film.

After catching the 6:30 (yuck) out of Lancaster, we arrived at 30th Street Station. Above is the famous statue the Pennsy erected in memory of its employees who were killed during World War II. Companies don't do much of this kind of thing anymore.

And then there was this rather impressive low-relief carving (mural?) which dated back to the current building's predecessor, built I think in the 1890s. It depicts the onward march of transportation, or something.

I thought the best part was this kid holding a representation of air travel, which looks like what would have happened if the Union Army had asked John Stephenson to design their observation balloon gondolas.

There was a lot happening upstairs; 30th Street at rush hour is an interesting place for a traction fan. There were a LOT of trains moving, all of them electric. One of the odder ones was this single-car MU train, looking somewhat interurban-like despite the surroundings.

And we saw a couple of AEM7 locomotives; I was hopping aboard a train when I took this so the photo isn't very good. SEPTA is the only railway still operating these things; Amtrak and MARC have retired all of theirs.

Ah yes, railfans taking pictures of railfans taking pictures. Here's David in downtown Media photographing an outbound car on the old Red Arrow broad gauge system. We took the old Pennsy out to Media and walked up the hill into town to catch the Red Arrow back in. This is right at the end of the Media line, which itself is kind of an interesting operation.

We got off the Media car at Drexel Hill Junction and then took an outbound car to Sharon Hill, the other extant Red Arrow broad gauge line, and thence back into 69th Street Terminal. While we waited at the junction this inbound car went by.

And that's the end of the Philadelphia railfanning photos. From 69th Street we rode the old P&W to Norristown and back and then rode the Market-Frankford into center city before heading back to Lancaster.

Not a train, I know, but also probably not long for this world. The SS United States, arguably the last of the great transatlantic ocean liners that isn't either scrapped or the Queen Mary, sits rusting at the dock south of center city Philadelphia. It's easily viewed from the parking lot of the Chick-fil-A in this incongruously gentrifying area of the city.