made plans to form a chase party to cap- ture this historic event. My friend Terry Chicwak rode with me in my car, while Dave Beach rode with Mark Demaline in his car. After an all-night drive we arrived at Hagerstown at sunrise and found a bunch of railfans gathered near the roundhouse. Among them was Bob Mc- Cown, who had recently moved from Cleveland to Washington, D.C., and in- vited us to stay at his house that night. When were arrived at the yard, we found one of WM’s distinctive EMD BL-2s switching with a slug. So far, so good! Next, we saw the power getting ready for the Union Bridge local. We found out that the crew was adding a GP9 to the consist because they didn’t want to perform their switching duties with the lone pair of F-units. On the bright side, it was in matching “circus” colors. After a short wait, the train pulled out of the yard past the assem- bled crowd of railfans. As we happily
RIGHT: The first find of the morning after an overnight drive from Cleveland was in front of the Hagerstown yard tower where WM BL-2 7182 was switching out trailers. The number of railfan shadows was an early indication we would have lots of company chasing that day. BELOW: The Union Bridge local departed Hagerstown on December 16, 1978, with the lead unit glistening in the low morning sun from being polished the night before with oily rags by some local railfans.
snapped away, I couldn’t believe how shiny the F-units looked. I later found out that some local railfans led by Mark Caplan had wiped them down the night before with some oily rags. We were soon off to Highfield where
they switched for a while before head- ing
east on the “Dutch Line” (the
Hanover Subdivision) for a short trip to the GAF roofing shingle plant. This was known as the “grit mill” to the crews, and was switched Monday-Fri- day by the Gettysburg local, and Satur-
days by the Union Bridge job. The plant was a very busy customer for WM, re- ceiving inbound loads of glues, adhe- sives, dyes and paint, and shipping out granules in covered hoppers. After they completed their work at the mill, they ran a caboose hop back to Highfield where they put together their train for Union Bridge. During this whole time I had no idea where I was. Fortunately, I was able to follow the other local rail- fans as we chased from shot to shot. It was a good chase to Union Bridge
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