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With the daily transfer from Norfolk Southern to CSX, NS G74 (Z918) passes by the old Southern Railway building in Atlanta with SD40-2 3291 leading the train.
After working Cartersville, CSX Q541-23 is struggling up the hill at the North End of Emerson siding as the 175 car manifest is Atlanta bound before heading to Waycross.
After seeing the M-ARJA westbound, M-SHNS departs the siding at Hickory with clear track into Meridian. The train will be handed off to the NS and will become NS 340 as it heads to Birmingham, Alabama.
NICTD Train 7 is captured departing the newly constructed 11th Street Station while passing the former "church curve" location at Cedar St. You can still see some of the original 11th St. curve and sidewalk between the evergreen tree and signal boxes North of the ROW. This is CP 33.5 on the South Shore Line in Michigan City Indiana.
November 11, 2023
NS 175 is back under way after seeing a few northbounds as the Macon, Georgia bound manifest passes under the signal bridge at CP Clark, on the Atlanta Terminal District.
UP 2583, a Tier 4 GEVO, leads a long and heavy southbound freight past the north switch at Dougren on the way to Roseville.
Lap sidings aren't as common as they once were, but a pair still exists at Cairo, OH on the former B&O between Toledo and Dayton. These sidings are still protected by CPLs, like this dwarf protecting northbound movements out of the south siding.
Cairo, OH
January 16th, 2022
Pulling into the siding at Crenshaw, MS, L536 will run around their short train before working a customer. The would have to makes these moves around the fast approaching Amtrak City of New Orleans.
CN 5317 switches the Pixelle Specialty Solutions paper mill just off the west end of Stevens Point yard next to the control point where the last switch joins the mainline to cross the Wisconsin River and head west. A tiny bit of the through truss bridge is visible above the cut of boxcars to the right of the 5317. July 20, 2024.
The day's second H-MEMBIR has just been recrewed and the crew is working to make the train solid as they pull through the control point at South Amory Crossover with a trio of GEs on the head end.
"CT to the 171, come south, clear to Jersey", with miles of open track, NS 171 (Conway, PA - Chattanooga, TN) pulls through the SE of Sale Creek siding. The 11000' manifest was a nice catch on a beautiful Sunday morning.
K813, another unit empty phosphate train to the Bone Valley region of Florida, is this time on the W&A side as the train passes through SE Martin Marietta siding. The lead unit is CSX 4845, one of 20 pre-production SD70ACes the railroad got from EMD. These units have been retired having been plagued with issues their whole service lives.
Of the four motors on the train, only the second, ES44AH # 898 and fourth, SD70MAC 4557 are still serving the railroad.
NS 289 thunders through CP Friends on their way to Knoxville to swap out before heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Running all by itself, UP 8212 splits the searchlight dwarfs at CP LF980 in Beaumont. The train has a sizeable set-out here so the locomotive will pull the first part of its train past the CP before shoving back into Beaumont yard.
MEWLI (Manifest- Englewood Yard [Houston] to Livonia, LA)
UP C45AH #8212
Beaumont, TX
June 26th, 2021
M45 passes thru the control point at Bates with a 23-car Memorial Day edition of the Ford autoparts train.
After the nice sun on Sunday, everything went to crap this holiday weekend with high clouds and scattered showers.
NS 9129
NS 9674
It's the classic "right before the train got there one flash died and then only the first light went off", so with a conversion to B&W and a fair bit of CPR from Lightroom, I've got something I think is at least presentable.
A pair of GEVO's sandwiching an ACe bring a Mexico-bound manifest through the old SP searchlights protecting Niles Jct on the Freight Main (Main 1) of UP's Houston Sub in the First Ward.
MEWTO 13 (Manifest- Englewood Yard [Houston] to Eagle Pass, TX [FXE])
UP C45ACCTE #7502
UP SD70ACe #8812
UP C45ACCTE #5376
Houston, TX
March 13th, 2021
IC 6252 leads a southbound local towards Proctor, MN at Grand Lakes with a pair of EMDs behind it. This was technically our second train of the day but I was fully awake for this chase.
NS 230 is running just a bit late a the train works its way north toward Atlanta, Georgia its destination.
A late running 120 sits on the main awaiting an even later running 21T at Bates. 120 was hanging out by a couple hundred of feet on the west end, so 21T had to pull all the way into the Pass and wait for 120 to start pulling before they finally got a signal to continue west.
Operations over the weekend were a complete mess west of Springfield, with trains either running way late or parked in sidings awaiting new crews for over 24 hours. Definitely sucked for the crews, but made things much more interesting for me.
NS 4412 - AC44C6M
NS 9433 - D9-44CW
Bates CP - New Berlin, Illinois
November 6, 2021
With a light dusting of snow hanging on at the southend of the Kingston Siding, Atlanta Division yard job Y122-08 glides north into the siding to run around their train. The job has just finished working Shaw and the AC Dispatcher gave the crew , after hearing it was snowing, the option of running around the train instead of shoving back the four and a half miles to the yard.
Pushing north out of Inman with traffic for Whitaker, NS G88 sports a pair of EMD SD60E with a decent size train behind them.
With a SD40E leading a pair of SD40-2, NS T3A passes through CP Friends on the Bristol District east of Knoxville. This train came out ot work at least the Nyrstar Mine in New Market, Tennessee.
Thundering down main one heading for a swap at Phoenix, NS 371 passes NS 1217 leading the 188 as they try to get out town.
CN rack train E29471-15 is moments away from entering CN's Jackson Yard to hand the train off to its final crew. The rack train is bound for what I think is a Toyota plant at Canton, Mississippi.
A massive ethanol train headed for Philadelphia splits the signals at Southwest St in the large junction at Bellevue.
NS 64T (Ethanol Loads- Decatur, IL to Port Richmond, PA)
NS AC44C6M #4080
(Mid-train DPU) NS AC44C6M #4089
(Mid-train DPU) NS AC44C6M #4069
Bellevue, OH
January 15th, 2022
Fresh from their station stop at Jackson, Mississippi, Amtrak train 58, the City of New Orleans, passes CP North Jackson on the Yazoo Subdivision in route to its next stop in Greenwood, Mississippi. The train will reach Chicago the next day where it would terminate.
Passing through West End Two Tracks and preparing to cross the CSX KD subdivision, NS manifest train 15T is on the next to last leg of it journey south. Only Debutts yard, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to work before arriving in Birmingham's Norris Yard.
NS 735 has got miles of clear track ahead of him as NS 370 ducks in at Lindale to wait to work Rome. The coal train is bound for Memphis and interchange back to BNSF for another load of Powder River Basin coal.
Pulling hard out the siding at Bolivar, CSX T700 thunders back up to speed as the train heads for Georgia Power 's Plant Bowen.
A pair of clean "flared" SD70M's power a PSR Chicago bypass train of MNPAH 19. This train runs straight to the NS at Ashland Ave from North Platte, NE. Seen here passing through a control point on the Geneva sub complete with an island of active code line. 5125,5200.
"Hot" Triple Crown train #255 heads into the Pass at Bates to meet a short time #398 and empty autorack train 29M. There was a time when #255 would have never seen anything other than High Greens all the way from Decatur to Moberly. These days the hottest trains on the Springfield-Hannibal District are those with crews either on overtime or in jeopardy of dying on their hours of service.
BNSF 8195
With the end of another spring day upon them, the crew of CSX Q142 stand on the ground to see the Q583 pass at North Junta. A rare passing location, the sun decided to pop out just as the train arrived adding a little flare to the last railfanning of the day.
CSX W225, a loaded coke train, departs Brewer Yard in Danville, Il. on its way south. The SD40-2 had been leading until the SD40-3 crapped out, thus the added the Gevo. Dangit.
Once the poor old 153 limped out of the way, NS 901 blasts off toward Atlanta. The geometry train was powered by ex. BN SD40-2 #3531 leading NS 36 and NS 32.
We are back in the Allegheny Mountains with what is our last major event of the trip: the WNY&P Driftwood Turn.
WNYP #638 ducks under the old North Eldred control point just short of the NY/PA border with five cars for Port Allegany. After that mission is complete, all three engines will return to Olean.
The former Buffalo Line was once a grand collection of first generation PRR CTC signals in its entirety between Harrisburg and Buffalo. West of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, the CTC has been cut off, and the remaining active portions are undergoing PTC modernization.