Working on the Railroad

07/13/12 239# 42m

Rode on the Montour Trail, starting at Boggs at 0600 and riding to McMurray and world-famous FarmHouse Coffee. This morning's weather was a pleasant change, a bit cooler and overcast skies. It appears that the fracking wastewater processing plant near Boggs has been removed, leaving a very X-Files-ish scene where something used to be.

Encountered a detour just north of Route 50 / Venice for the installation of fence between the trail and the rail line.

At the two new bridges at Morganza Road and Georgetown Road the trail is (re)surfaced all the way up to the new bridge decks, it looks very nice and might just need a light rain to help settle the limestone.

Stopped at FarmHouse Coffee. Indulged in a ham/swiss/two-egg croissant and coffee, very very good. Back on the trail, folks were posting announcements for a July 27 Twilight Walk, which may (or may not) include extremely attractive, romantic young vampires.

Travel was halted north of Route 50 / Venice because of rail construction. The new rail line was being used to shuttle additional track segments down to a site where even more track was being set in place. For all the talk of self-building robots in recent years, this almost seems like a self-building railroad; once they get a bit of train track, they use that to build more.

In the photo below, temporary carriages travelling along the new rail line are supporting parallel rows of new track; the entire assembly moves back and forth along the track (and across road and trail crossings) as the track is laid.



A minor kvetch, but there were two different work crews - the fence installers, and the track installers, and between them they closed both possible routes along the trail. But the forced wait was only about twenty minutes, they were clearly working at it, and the time passed and it was back on the bike.

An easy ride back to Boggs, it was nice to get the ride in early. 42 miles.