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.

 

[richard carr]

Sunday morning I set off for Elkhart but realised that I wasn't going to get there before McDonalds stopped serving breakfast.
Satnav said Sturgis was the nearest one so I left the freeway and headed there.
It's a while since I've been to Sturgis, these days this is branch off the Grand Elk leaving at White Pigeon, formerly it was part of the New York Central original route to Toledo. Now the branch ends in Sturgis.

I didn't see any locos parked anywhere but these plastic pellet hoppers were there.



I'm pretty certain they are carrying plastic pellets as the building to the left that you can't see had a big sign saying plastics manufacturer on it when I drove past. The wheel rims are shiny so they haven't been parked there for long.



Here I'm looking towards the end of the line, the route carries on to Coldwater but the track isn't usuable anymore



So then it was on to Elkhart following the railway, there were some box cars at the junction waiting for someone to collect them.

I went to the Amtrak station and in the distance was a head light. It wasn't long before it arrived.








Once that had gone by I went to the west end of the yard, there was nothing doing at all.







I gave it 10 minutes then headed off to Pines Junction about an hour away.

 

[richard carr]

If you hop back on the interstate it doesn't take long to get to Pines Junction, although you do have to drive through the worst part of Gary.

The first train to arrive was this manifest on the NS tracks.



In the yard you could see that they were sorting out a Coke Express train getting ready to leave.





Then this train started heading up the hil and over the tracks, a couple of GEs leading but two SD70s following behind







It looked like they were departing but they stayed on the bridge over the tracks for 15 minutes before pushing back into the yard in the end it was over an hour before they left with a fair bit of switching in between.



Next I had a BNSF powered stack train heading towards Elkhart



Then an NS road railer turned up once the the train ha gone by and set off along the track.



I walked over towards the CN tracks, in the distance you could make out these 2 locos an SD38-2 and GP38-2



Then these 2 started taking a train up the hump



But it soon pushed back into the yard and these 2 came out of nowhere





These 2 then started a train up the hill



and at the same time the other train went back up the hill too, hidden behind it.

 

[richard carr]

And the last train at Pines for me was this NS stack train.
I decided to head to Dolton Junction after this, it was the first time I had been there for 2 years. It's further than you thing to get there and took about 40 minutes



Not a lot was happening when I did get there and others were looking to leave but I hung around and eventutally a signal turned green and this came round the corner from Blue Island




A very interesting lashup



A CSX SD70 and a CN SD75s and a CN SD70M2