Autumn Rails along the Hudson

Autumn Rails along the Hudson

I love the throaty roar of heavy diesels echoing across a broad river valley ...

Three GE diesel-electric locomotives, two AC44CW types at front and a newer ES44AC-H in position number
three are powering a long freight along the West Bank of the Hudson River on this late October afternoon.

While I normally prefer to capture autumn colors bathed in golden hour sunlight, in this case, the sun
had already sunk behind the mountain rising beyond the tracks. Nonetheless, I still found an attractive
mix of late autumn color in the trees in the 5 o'clock hour of this October afternoon, and liked the way
the blue and yellow CSX livery on those locomotives complimented Mother Nature's palette.

The scene was captured, in tele-compressed perspective, across a broad expanse of Hudson
River from the waterfront plaza of the Village of Cold Spring in Putnam County, New York.

An ideal railfan's afternoon, as I'd ridden the scenic Hudson Line of the Metro North Railroad, along the eastern side of the river, up to Cold Spring from Grand Central. The Hudson Line is used by Metro North commuter trains as far north as Poughkeepsie, as well as by Amtrak Empire Service passenger trains headed for Albany, and beyond to points north and west. The west bank mainline belongs to CSX and exclusively serves freight movements.

© 2024 Steve Ember