Exit Sand Man
Today's sucky news is that OMNITRAX will purchase the Winchester & Western from Covia. Some of my earliest memories were of chasing the CSX Winchester local with my favorite Chessie two-bay sand hoppers, as well as the bright yellow W&W ribbed hoppers and of course the ALCO RS11s and S6s they had in service in the late 1980s. I've returned a handful of times over the past twenty years to photograph the secondhand EMDs that supplanted and ultimately replaced the ALCOs. A former Conrail GP10 leads the way up Round Hill with sand loads from the Unimin mine in Gore, Virginia. The W&W still runs sand, but has diversified so well with their former Pennsylvania Railroad line to Hagerstown, Maryland that it was just a matter of time before one of these damn conglomerates came in. Let's hope they don't trash the looks of the place, but I'm not optimistic, especially with blue GMTX GP38 rebuild units arriving on the property recently.
Exit Sand Man
Today's sucky news is that OMNITRAX will purchase the Winchester & Western from Covia. Some of my earliest memories were of chasing the CSX Winchester local with my favorite Chessie two-bay sand hoppers, as well as the bright yellow W&W ribbed hoppers and of course the ALCO RS11s and S6s they had in service in the late 1980s. I've returned a handful of times over the past twenty years to photograph the secondhand EMDs that supplanted and ultimately replaced the ALCOs. A former Conrail GP10 leads the way up Round Hill with sand loads from the Unimin mine in Gore, Virginia. The W&W still runs sand, but has diversified so well with their former Pennsylvania Railroad line to Hagerstown, Maryland that it was just a matter of time before one of these damn conglomerates came in. Let's hope they don't trash the looks of the place, but I'm not optimistic, especially with blue GMTX GP38 rebuild units arriving on the property recently.