Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad

Even a frustrating day railfanning beats a normal day in the office.

Still, when you follow a small pike from one end to another, you want to see the locomotive -- the proverbial pot at the end of the circuitous shortline rainbow. When my railfan buddy Ben Wells and I set out to track the little Turkle Creek line near Pittsburgh from its interchange to its dead end, we followed the creek and the rails all the way northwest, but rolled into the borough of Export having found no engine along the way. Frustrating. The sun was getting low in the west, and we concluded that line must have been abandoned. (We had observed several roadbed washouts on the drive into town.) Still, we noticed that the "end of the line" in town did not, in fact, look like the end ... tracks seemed to push through the woods just a little farther. Sure enough, out at the far end of the town we discovered their aging NW2 looking worse for the wear. Could this be the online locomotive? Surely not. A shop worker met us outside, and kindly tipped us off to the hiding place of the real TCKR power. We found her, just as he said: back in Murrysville, safely bedded down behind bars, tucked into the back of the local lumberyard. She looked great, given her age ... but the chain link, padlocks, and warning signs prevented better pictures. Frustrating. Even so, it all beats a day in the office.