Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. IP Address: 44.197.108.187 -- Domain: Amateur Radio Digital Communications
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SHOE_050601_14.JPG: The GP9 is on display here. It's a diesel-powered train engine. Previously, steam-powered engines were used. The Pennsylvania Railroad had state-of-the-art facilities for steam engines in Altoona and invested heavily in the technology. However, steam-powered trains required a lot of maintenance, as much as 14 to 16 days out of every month, whereas diesel-powered engines required just 1 or 2. Diesels, essentially big trucks, could be operated by one man (or woman). Steam engines required an engineer at the controls and a fireman to watch the levels. The GP9 was ordered in 1955, its engine being made by GM., at the tail end of the Pennsy's slow conversion from steam to diesel.
SHOE_050601_40.JPG: The entire inside of this area is graded to allow the trains to go up
SHOE_050601_51.JPG: A train came while I was here. Note the color of the water below. They said the discoloration is from water dripping through mine pits. The water is essentially toxic.
SHOE_050601_54.JPG: The train comes around on the other end of the horseshoe
Wikipedia Description: Horseshoe Curve (Pennsylvania)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Horseshoe Curve is a famous railroad curve in central Pennsylvania in the United States (it is a horseshoe curve).
It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad and later used by the Penn Central, then Conrail. It is currently owned by Norfolk Southern Railway, and used by Amtrak's Pennsylvanian service. It is located in Kittanning Gap at the summit of the Allegheny Front, approximately 5 miles (8 km) west of Altoona. The bend is a tight arc of approximately 220 degrees. It comprises two separate curves; on the north side, the radius measures 637 ft (194 m), tightening to 609 ft (186 m) on the south side. The curve was built in response to the difficulty of constructing a railroad through the summit of the Allegheny Mountains. It was designed by J. Edgar Thomson and Herman Haupt, opening on February 15, 1854. It was such an important location that it was guarded by Union soldiers during the American Civil War and a number of additional conflicts.
The curve has been in nearly continuous operation since 1854. Originally comprising two tracks, it was widened to four tracks 1898–1900. Conrail removed one of the tracks in 1981 and the Curve remains in this three-track configuration. It has long been a popular tourist attraction, and is accessible via the Horseshoe Curve Funicular, a funicular railway running to a small park built by the PRR in 1879 at the summit of the ridge. A visitors' center with a trackside observation area is maintained at the site.
The curve's importance to railroad traffic in the U.S. was such that the Nazis attempted to sabotage it in Operation Pastorius during World War II. The curve was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and is now a part of the National Register of Historic Places.
Altoona's minor league baseball team, the Altoona Curve, is named after this railroad landmark.
The location is also noted among geologists for its excellent rock outcrops, including the Devonian Catskill Formation.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!