ID the location and date

An easy one, perhaps, but how about the exact photo location and a date?

Steve - Interesting photo...This looks to be the Lower Montauk Branch east of LI City judging by the background
and the color schemes on the locomotives - in particular MP15 154 with the circle M date this early-mid 90s.

This picture should be posted in the "Temporary Manual Block Signal" topic thanks to there being one set up
and in use on the right side of the picture. This was also spotted by ExCon90 and should answer Gamer's
question as to what one of these signals actually looks like in service...MACTRAXX

Bliss Tower, YPD 131 turning the engines.

4behind2 is spot on. Those are the old temporaries and judging by the lack of plastic pellets on the ground, I'd say before my time but after the tower closed, so very late '80s until mid '90s. Nailing down the exact time could be done if you had the old General Notices for track work projects where Bliss would be re-opened, maybe for the big Harold project in the early '90s.

When they did it in my time, they would have 2 temps out there, one for each track. I wondered why we had 2 when we so rarely wrong-railed, but then the drilling would start and the second one was a big help.

Other helpful giveaways are the details of the locomotives; the 154 has ditchlights (the vast majority of the fleet got them in 1997 ahead of the mandate) and the 271 still has not yet received its Diesel Dan horn mod, which happened before it had ditchlights added in 1997.

That said… I own this slide and can cheat. It’s a Jeff Erlitz photo and the frame is marked with the date 6-20-97. Looking west at Blissville right next to Allied Extruders is correct. Anybody still have any old GN’s lying around collecting dust?

Great, now I can credit it and date!