Richard's American Train Adventures

[Osgood]

Be fun seeing the grey one negotiate @Jordan or Plymouth Mad ‘s top drawer siding!

 

[Osgood]

The 90 deg. crossing at Rochelle shows the (uniquely?) American way of fitting as many sleepers ties under the rails as possible at heavily trafficked zones.
Is this is down to the sheer volume of tonnage over the rails rather than heavier individual axle loadings, or something else?

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

Be fun seeing the grey one negotiate @Jordan or Plymouth Mad ‘s top drawer siding!

With occupant?

Is this is down to the sheer volume of tonnage over the rails rather than heavier individual axle loadings, or something else?

Likely a combination of the two, I'd have thought.

 

[richard carr]

The 90 deg. crossing at Rochelle shows the (uniquely?) American way of fitting as many sleepers ties under the rails as possible at heavily trafficked zones.
Is this is down to the sheer volume of tonnage over the rails rather than heavier individual axle loadings, or something else?

Axle loadings are much higher in the states, up to 36 US tons or 32 UK tons based on the maximum freight car weigth of 286,000 pounds.

RIchard

 

[mickoo]

Both GE and EMD offer 'heavy' locos and CSX, UP are certainly two who have taken up that offer; they're standard locos with extra ballast for traction.

GE's ES44AH comes in at a whopping 432,000lbs weight, just over 196 tons on 6 axles; as Richard notes, a smidge over 32 tons per axle.

 

[richard carr]

I'm back in the US again, so Friday afternoon I picked up a car and crawled the 130 miles to Goshen (about 10 miles south of Elkhart) in nearly 4 hours. I saw a few trains on the way and a couple when I finally got there.

So on Saturday morning I set off for Deshler planning to go via Kendallville Butler, Woodburn and Defiance in the hope of seeing something interesting along the way.

The first stop was Kendallville, not surprisingly there was nothing happening on the terminal railroad, but there was a green signal on the mainline and I just had time to grab this



An ACe heading a train of 2 bay hoppers



I moved on to Butler another 25 miles east, the Fort Wayne to Detroit crosses the mainline here.

Another green signal so I stopped amd waited for the train.



Woodburn is about 20 miles south of Butler along an almost dead straight road, by now it was raining hard but at least it was warm.

Woodburn is the end of the Napoleon Defiance and Western Railroad, but nothing was happening that day.
Their new GP15 was parked up waiting for Monday



I went back to US24 and headed north east to Defiance to see what was parked up at the NDW HQ.



I haven't seen this one before , a very bright GP20.
All the other usual locos were there including this one.



I headed east out of town, as I did I heard a train on the CSX mainline and managed to see what looked like a coal train heading east towards Deshler. I was stuck in traffic but though I should catch it up at some point. There is General Motors Powertrain foundry plant on the edge of town. There are a number of siding there and I saw a pair of CSX locos near some autoracks, so I stopped to grab a photo.





Once I had grabbed these photos I continued east, I finally caught sight of the train from Defiance near to Hamler about 6 miles from Deshler so I was hurrying to catch it up.



This was as close as I got, I'm on main street in Deshler, and this is the DPU, you can just make out the train heading towards me in the distance.



It looks like it's a stack train

 

[richard carr]

I moved to the west end of main street and checked the signals in the distance,



It's a red over green so something else isn't far behind that coal train



Another stack train heading east as the westbound leaves Deshler behind



Lots of trailers on flat cars so this must be a hot train

There's even a trailer in a well car, I haven't seen that before



So now we know red over green means changing tracks but full speed ahead once you have.



It all went quiet after that, I saw this one parked in the south, but then someone told me it had been there for 2 hours so far.



While I was stood waiting I noticed this very short piece of rail



Everything went quiet, nothing moved for over an hour, then the train in the south finally got moving.






Then the boss rings and Jim arrives, 2 trains go by while I'm on the phone. It's all action again.

 

[mickoo]

At junctions or crossovers they will place two sets of signals, one above the other, in the UK/Europe we’d use one set and a feather.

The higher set is virtually always the main line and straight on, the lower is the diverging route.

This is where the phrase ‘high green’ or ‘high ball’ (back in the day when signals were spheres) comes from, it indicates all clear straight ahead.

In this instance the trailer train has priority over the coal so likely switching over to do a rolling pass.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

in the UK/Europe we’d use one set and a feather.

Mainland Europe tends to use speed signalling where the aspect dictates the line speed at which the junction or crossover is to be taken.

 

[richard carr]

Once I had finished with the Boss, more trains arrived, this one cut across the tracks and turned south.







An ES40 DC



It wasn't jus autoracks but lots of interesting freight cars










Next up was an east bound manifest changing tracks as it entered Deshler



Compete with a heritage liveried DPU





Then a westbound stack train

 

[richard carr]

Next came a train from the south, this time with an interesting lashup. the second loco is a an SD60 and the third is a road slug.








The road slug, so no diesel engine, just traction current from another loco. I've no idea if it was actually working





It's the coke express again making it's way back to Pittsburgh






And the last train of the day for us was this CP powered stack train, a bit unusual as the DPU was cut in about 10 cars back from the front, it wasn't a particularly long train which I doubt really needed a DPU at all.

 

[mickoo]

The slug won't be powered, they need specific mother/cow/master engines modified with traction motor power cables; usually other smaller B truck units. The SD60M (in it's self a good catch) does not have that feature so the slug is in transit to somewhere.