Railfanning action in and around Salisbury, NC and NTCM Celebrating America 250 (08/28/26-08/30/26)

Finally got out again after a long absence, and in a big way. Starting out Friday morning, a friend and I made our way up to North Carolina to attend NCTMs event Celebrating Americas 250th Anniversary. We got up there a day early to enjoy some railfanning action along the NS Piedmont Division between China Point and Lexington, NC, catching 3 NCDOT Piedmont trains plus NS manifest 15R headed to Columbia, SC. The following day brought us to the North Carolina Transportation Museum for the gathering of over 30 locomotives painted honoring Americas 250th Anniversary, where we got some action involving the freight special that was operating throughout the museum, including a solid minute of GE 7FDL-12 turbo clug trying to restart the freight train going uphill after the lead unit failed. At the end of the day, we caught the evening parade of locomotives before going back to the hotel for the day. Finally our trip came to an end this morning, but not before we got another NCDOT Piedmont at Kannapolis and NS 24X passing under some of the last Southern Railway signals on the NS system in Lowe, SC. I have to admit, it was nice to get out again. Hopefully I will get some more action soon. (Note, between 8:16 and 14:00, I HIGHLY recommend you lower your volume as I was very close to these units when they were blasting their horns)