For a few years in the 1990’s I worked in downtown Philadelphia, and commuted from the western suburbs on the former PRR main line. There were three trains that left downtown at the end of the working day that were classified as “Limited, meaning that they made no local stops before Wayne, saving the riders from the farthest-out stations from having to endure all of those stops. The limiteds were always locomotive-hauled trains, which required the most juice from the overhead catenary when starting from a stop. I usually took the first of the three limiteds, which departed 30th Street at 4:54.
On this particular day, the train that I was riding (I have it recorded as train 7555) ground to a halt near Ardmore. As we waited, the second limited crept by at a restricted speed. Somehow, I managed to get to a vestibule door undetected, and get this shot of a rare occurrence, a SEPTA locomotive-hauled train running around another locomotive-hauled train.
