SUMMER STEAM EXCURSION TIME!

With the arrival of summer, it's excursion time!

Engine 34 rolls into town, with a extra-long consist of cars. These trips are proving to be popular!

The bell clangs as she passes through Hillsdale Yard, on her way to Cumberland.

One of the new cars is this old Canadian National coach. Like the other cars, it is a wood-bodied car, although it's a 50' car, compared to it's 34' brethren.

A caboose brings up the rear, although it's a "drovers" car. The car gets its name from the early cattle car era, when the "drovers" who accompanied the livestock on the trip to the slaughterhouses rode in the caboose with the train conductor. The passenger section was added to accommodate the riders, and later these types of cabooses were used in mixed train service. Car 145 is still undergoing cosmetic work, but is still good for the trip.

Later that afternoon, engine 34 returns to town, on its way back to Pittsburgh.

Passing along side a lease-unit SD40-2, the size comparison between a steamer built before the turn of the century and a modern diesel is apparent. And the diesel is about 10' shorter than the current models offered by EMD and GE!

The train rolls past County Lane, and Hillsdale, on its way west to Pittsburgh. Not a bad way to spend a day on the weekend!