Richard's American Train Adventures

[richard carr]

My next trip is well under way.

It started last Thursday in Elkhart. I was up early and down at the station shortly after 6. However nothing happened for about 40 minutes, I was beginning to think that there were some track works nearby, but then it started.



First up was a CPKC manifest with the the KCS GE unit on the point.

Then a Norfolk Southern ethanol train came in from the east with the sun rising behind it.



Next a stack train with lots of trailers



Then it was Amtraks turn to arrive





Next an NS manifest came out of the yard






Then a coil train came out of the yard to do some switching.

Then I switched to video which I'll post up shortly.

 

[richard carr]

At about 9:30 the local to Goshen appeared in the distance, 2 other railfans had arrived and were looking forward to seeing the caboose.

Then an autorack train came in the east and blocked the view as the local went by. They headed off to Goshen to go and see it there.

I was hoping to see the local that interchanges with the Elkhart and Western that happens about a mile away from the station in the middle of the town. It duly appeared and headed across the tracks to head up the branch. We jumped in the car and went to follow. Unfortunately there was road works as they were redoing the crossing near the siding (passing loop in English)
We made it though, and found the local had brought all the cars into the spare track of the siding.



The problem was there was E&W loco to pull the cars out. So the local had to back out all the cars, then run into the track that had the cars going back to the yard.



These are the cars waiting to go back to the yard. the road is running through the gap in them.




Now he has to push all the cars going back to the yard out of the siding and leave the cars for the E&W on that track. He can then pull forward on the other track to get back to the yard. This all took over 2hours, partly because there is a road running through the siding and they aren't allowed to leave it blocked.




Now he is backing the cars out so he can run round the cars he brought in.

Lots of video of this to follow.

Richard

 

[JasonD]

Pic 1 in this post ... anyone done KCS handrails? Quiet evening so lets look this one up. KCSdeM ES44AC, oh - de Mexico.

KCSM 4730

KCSM 4730

www.rrpicturearchives.net

 

[richard carr]

Pic 1 in this post ... anyone done KCS handrails? Quiet evening so lets look this one up. KCSdeM ES44AC, oh - de Mexico.

KCSM 4730

KCSM 4730

www.rrpicturearchives.net

Yes just a bit tricky Jason !

Richard

 

[JasonD]

Sorry Richard, but I can't let you just stand there enjoying yourself ... I need detail shots of covered hopper ends and high-side gons and .... So put your A&W root beer down and get crackin' on the freight cars.

Thanks, Jason
OK, OK, I got it wrong ... Mountain Dew, satisfyingly less fizz

 

[Jordan]

the local had brought all the cars into the spare track of the siding....
The problem was there was E&W loco to pull the cars out. So the local had to back out all the cars, then run into the track that had the cars going back to the yard.....
Now he has to push all the cars going back to the yard out of the siding and leave the cars for the E&W on that track. He can then pull forward on the other track to get back to the yard. This all took over 2hours, ....

Sounds like their layout isn't big enough.

 

[richard carr]

The Elkhart and Western interchange video is now on youtube

 

[richard carr]

Jordan, it isn't, it's tiny it's more like a model railway.
I thin when they arrived and found they couldn't just run round it caused a bit of head scratching, there was good 20 minutes before anythign else happened.

 

[JasonD]

NS 5650 ... so that's an early GP38 'cos it hasn't got that little glass inspection window on the right hand side of the long hood just below the front end of the radiator, above where the yellow handrail stanchion is and it has got 2 brake cylinders on the truck sideframes, rather than the shock absorber like many of the -2s had with the closer together roof fans and ..., and .... What's that? Clever parrot is telling me it's a PENN CENTRAL 2006 rebuild. So remind me what do GP38-3s look like? No it's not a -3, it's a -2, who said diesels are boring?

All going slowly enough to see the freight car details. Mixing Class 1 with connecting shortline subjects says it all for Nth Am modelling!
Jason

 

[richard carr]

The next day (Friday 24th May) the plan was to visit some more short lines and hopefully see some more slow action.

We started by visiting the ELkhart and Western again just in case they were operating, we had been told they were going to but clearly not a 7:15 in the morning.
So we headed off to Sturgis to see the Michigan Southern, its about 40 minutes from Elkhart. Nothing doing in Sturgis, a few freight cars were parked up but no sign of a loco or any operations that day.

This box car looked interesting to me





Next we drove over to Coldwater, the end of the line for the Indiana North Eastern. Again nothing was operating, it looked like everyone was having an extra long weekend.

The GP9 I saw on my visit in February was still there parked in the same place.







The track doesn't look great !

So after this we carried on through Hillsdale, but again nothing doing. We even drove down to Steubenville, where the line joins the route between the connection with NS at Montpelier and South Milford, but still nothing doing.
We then drove to Defiance to see if anything was moving on the Napoleon Defiance and Western, and guess what, nothing was happening there either !

The locos were all parked up in the yard at Defiance.








We then went down to the CSX main line, at least we saw a couple of trains here



Looking at the crossing, it is another those that carries the minor line up and over the main line without a break in the mainline.



Finally we drove over to Deshler, it of course delivered, 3 trains in 40 minutes, by then it was time to head to the hotel in Findlay for a steak dinner. The Deshler part is all on video.

 

[JasonD]

Half-term week so a busy Grandpa day and I made the mistake of looking at that Pioneer Lines GP20(?). Google made me regret doing a 'quick' seach. Yes, both track shots are grrrrreat. I lived up the line from Montpelier till I was 6yo. Avonmouth branch in Bristol that is.
Jason

 

[richard carr]

Saturday the plan was to try and see some Wheeling and Lake Erie locos. They are famous being in Denver and Rio Grande livery. The first port of call was Barberton, about 100 miles east of Findlay where we were staying.

We didn't find too much, and what we did find was hard to photograph, the over bridge which would have had a great view if it wasn;t for the dense mesh of the wire fence on it.



Thats a GP40, but not in the livery I expected. There was some seriously tight curves and a crossing in the small yard that lead into a steel fabrication factory.





The GP40 is still hiding






So next we went to Kent, a few miles along the road. There was plenty of parking and good easy access, just not a lot of trains for what is the former B&O mainline that is now CSX and heads all the way across Ohio through Deshler and on to Chicago.

We did miss this when we arrived



Yes that a Wheeling loco in the distance it has moved some cars when we arrived int he town and it came back and stayed there and did nothing for the 2 hours we were there. Eventually a train arrived on the CSX mainline, it was the Coke Express heading to Gary




We then drove on and as we departed we saw the Coke express heading in the opposite direction !

We found the Wheeling yard in Akron, there is a good view as you drive past on the freeway, but it is inaccessible at street level.

So we headed back towards Findlay planning to stop in Greenwich and Fostoria on the way back.

 

[richard carr]

The first stop was Greenwich, I was hoping to see a Wheeling train here as I had done last September. There is a complex set of lines. The main CSX New York to Chicago route (former B&O) passes through and is crossed by the line from Cleveland going south to Marion and on through Columbus. There is then inter connectors between east and south and west and north. We were not to be disappointed, the action started as soon as we arrived with this south bound manifest.



After that it is all on video. The Wheeling did arrive with a pair of SD40-2s on the front that made an incredible rackett.
We saw the COke Express again and several other trains. We then drove on to Fostoria.



Yes it's the Coke Express again, with 224 on the point, the 3rd time we had seen that train.
Fostoria seemed pretty quiet so we didn't stay too long and headed back to Findlay for dinner.

Here's the video, the wheeling train is at about 6:20

 

[richard carr]

We met a couple of railfans in Elkhart who had told us that the Nickel Plate 765 was hauling "Ice Cream" trains all weekend from Angola Indiana. So the plan for Sunday was to drive over for the first train at 1pm and see what was happening, as the website said it was sold out !

When we got there we found this



Yes somebody's favourite diesel !





Then we saw this



It turns out the trains were cancelled as the loco had a mechanical problem, it was limoing back to it's depot at Hudson about 15 miles away.
We set off to find it.



We found it at Ashley IN





Finally it got to the depot



There were also a few interesting diesels parked up too



An SD70M (it says so on the side on the right edge of the cab !)






A GP40 Dash 3



And an SD40-2

 

[richard carr]

And here's the bit of video of 765

 

[Scale7JB]

We met a couple of railfans in Elkhart who had told us that the Nickel Plate 765 was hauling "Ice Cream" trains all weekend from Angola Indiana. So the plan for Sunday was to drive over for the first train at 1pm and see what was happening, as the website said it was sold out !

When we got there we found this

View attachment 216627

Yes somebody's favourite diesel !

View attachment 216628

View attachment 216629

Then we saw this

View attachment 216630

It turns out the trains were cancelled as the loco had a mechanical problem, it was limoing back to it's depot at Hudson about 15 miles away.
We set off to find it.

View attachment 216631

We found it at Ashley IN

View attachment 216632

View attachment 216633

Finally it got to the depot

View attachment 216634

There were also a few interesting diesels parked up too

View attachment 216635

An SD70M (it says so on the side on the right edge of the cab !)




View attachment 216636

A GP40 Dash 3

View attachment 216637

And an SD40-2

Yes I admit, I do rather like a GP30!

JB.

 

[JasonD]

As a D&H enthusiast I couldn't get too worked up about GP30s, but they were (are) still interesting. One of the attachments in Richard's post:

https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/attachments/ohiomay24dsc_2996-jpg.216635/

is a second hand ex-UP SD70M. Its trucks have 'simpler' than I remember sideframes on UP SD70 diesels and no cab mounted fastening for the handrail end. Extra Weetabix for noticing that - what happened to the SD70I? - , now the D&H became a fallen flag before it got any 'wide-cab' diesels so I had to try hard to keep up what the M and I and MAC meant. Here's a nice read:

EMD SD70M

The EMD (Electro Motive Division) SD70M is a type of 4,000hp six-axle diesel locomotive built from 1992 to 2004 (and briefly resumed from 2005 to 2007-2008) with over 1,600 built. It is practically the modified or wide-cab version of the original SD70 (the "M" meaning, "modified"), only with...

trains-and-locomotives.fandom.com

Jason

 

[richard carr]

So after the 765 we headed back to Deshler about 100 miles east.

There has been a lot of track work going on there recently, they replaced the crossing about 2 weeks ago so the place is bit cluttered with machinery at the moment.

I did manage to grab this



Then it started to rain, and boy did it rain



We were trying to keep out of it under the shelter but the wind seemed to blow from all directions at once, so we decided to cut our losses and go.
You might have noticed these two cars in the photo above, yes they have train horns mounted on the roof !



Monday was to be the big drive back to Chicago, doing our best to avoid interstate freeways.

We started out in Leipsic, about 7 miles south of Deshler with the CSX Toledo Cincinnati line being crossed by a Norfolk Southern line that runs from Fort Wayne though Fostoria and onto Bellevue and Cleveland. There is also the Indiana and Ohio Railway that joins in from the Detroit area.



There is more industry than you might imagine in such a rural place, there is a big steel coating plant and a Mars Pet food factory and an ethanol plant, to the north of the town. These 2 light engines are between the Ethanol plant and the steel coating factory. They were waiting for this to come south before they headed north.



Then we headed south along the road that follows the rail, does it in places

 

[richard carr]

We headed south through Lepsic and as we left the town we found this scrap dealer hard at work at 8am on a public holiday.

There was no loco around but they were busy compacting the scarp and loading these gondolas.





Don't forget to model that bent ladder !

We then moved on to Lima, yes where the loco works used to be. There is till quite a bit of activity here, with the CSX Toledo sub (north south) crossed by the Chicago Fort Wayne and Eastern. The Indiana and Ohio also runs through too. We went down to the crossing, but not a lot was happening. I was listening to the CSX despatcher on Broadcastify. This broadcasts various radio channels, mainly police and emergency ones, but also railway ones too, so you don't need a scanner just your mobile phone.
For once I could actually understand what was being said and it was that a stack train, I141, had just left Ottawa about 10 miles north of Lima and so should arrive shortly. So it did but not before this GP38 got in on the act.



You can just see I141 creeping into the picture on the left, as it overtook this local that came out of the yard on the right.
Once I141 had gone past we headed off after the local and eventually caught it up a couple of miles further south as it entered another large yard and what looked like an oil refinery.







We also found this NS SD40 parked up



And these boxcars, I think the yellow one is the trainman one Atlas offers.








After this we decided to head on back towards Chicago, going the long way round without using the interstate highways. This was actually a lot of fun, there was almost no traffic on dead straight roads. The first stop off was going to be Kokomo Indiana.

 

[JasonD]

Better get my hobo gear aired, RBOX 38471 was in Fresno, CA last September-ish. Oh, the door will probably be shut again so I'll have to be satisfied with a bag of spray cans:

RBOX 38471

RBOX 38471

rrpicturearchives.net

Don't suppose I'll bump into the joker who saw the rise in the roof recently and printed off that DO NOT HUMP sticker. Keep 'em coming Richard
Jason