A friend and I heard Conrail local WJAL-18 on the scanner and decided to follow it on an unusual Saturday run. WJAL-18 was a turn from Allentown, Pennsylvania, serving the former Lackawanna Phillipsburg Branch, going as far as Dover, New Jersey. The train had a GP30 leader, and was about the only train that used the former Jersey Central bridge over the Delaware River. We waited at an elevated vantage point to shoot the local, only to receive a big disappointment. The crew dropped a car and ran around it in Easton, and then pushed it to set out at a facing-point switch on the DL&W. The power eventually uncoupled from the trailing cars at the end of the bridge to deliver the car, but we never had the opportunity to get a clean shot on the bridge.
Today, the Lehigh Valley bridge in the foreground is abandoned due t structural issues, and Norfolk Southern trains between Allentown and Oak Island use the CNJ bridge.
