Richard's American Train Adventures

[richard carr]

I decided to spend Saturday out and about south of Chicago. I headed first to Pines Junction to see plenty of trains. Sat nav took me through Chicago as traffic was very light and took me to Michigan Avenue East Chicago, so I thought I might as well stop by the yard there.



A pair of Indianan Harbor Belt locos were working the yard





This is a new bit of track, that wasn't here a year ago



I then spotted them moving cars around at the freight car repair shop a bit further up the road.



It was time to get some breakfast and head over to Pines Junction

It was all action as usual, these 2 are pushing a train back into the yard.



I walked over to the CN lines, the water under the bridge looked deeper than ever, I wasn't going to try driving through that.

I got over there and of course the gates went off on the CSX lines



This train came out of the yard next, I was listening to the yard radio and they said this had 134 cars, 117 loaded and 17 empties, it was a long train, it headed off south.





They were doing a bit of switching with this train behind it.



I walked back to the car on the other side, Amtrak then appeared out of no where.



Quickly followed by an eastbound manifest

 

[richard carr]

This had been lurking on the far side of the hump waiting to go into the yard.




Next it was CSX's turn with another manifest heading east.



Then a coal train on NS heading west



This then got passed by a UP powered autorack train



That ACe is just filthy



By now I was listening to GP qualifying on the BBC, and all these pesky trains kept turning up !



and another CSX manifest



A former Bessemer and Lake Erie SD45 T2 leads some more cars up the hump



Then CSX sends a 2 bay hopper train west towards Chicago.





Then this starts heading up the hump



Yes it's those former UP gensets, it looks like they are taking them back to Homewood.

I set off for Griffith to get a decent photo of train.

 

[richard carr]

Griffith is about 20 minutes drive to the south of Pines Junction, I stopped on to catch the train before it reached the junction at south Broad Street.







I then tried to beat it to the junction but got blocked by the train itself.
All I saw was it disappearing into the distance.



I decided to head west and chase it, I was going to Matteson where the interconnectors to the IC mainline are.

Walking up to the railfan platform this large deer was hiding in the scrub as I walked by, talk about making you jump.



It was safe enough as there was no trains to be seen anywhere.

I carried on west to Joliet. The CN has a large yard there from the EJ&E, BNSF also passes through the town with the end of Transcon 2.
There are also Metra and Amtrak and the Iowa Interstate crosses transcon 2 at the former Union station.

I eventually found the CN yard, it proved difficult to find anywhere with a good vantage point. Not a lot was happening, but in the middle of this phot you can see 2 yellow locos.



It's the Gensets, the train must have been heading here to Joliet.



I found my way round to the other end of the yard and here are the CN locos doing a bit of switching.



With nothing else to see I made my round to the former Union Station, I stopped off at burger king on the way there and then sat down to eat my lunch, of course a train arrived when I'm in the middle of it.



The Iowa Interstate crossing has been replaced with a jump style one, it's a lot quieter, a good job as they were just setting up for a wedding on the platform while I was there.





Another train soon arrived, the first container of the day, but all 40 footers, not an amazon box in sight

 

[Big Train James]

Yes it's those former UP gensets, it looks like they are taking them back to Homewood

Wouldn't be surprised if they were heading back to NRE in either Mt. Vernon or Paducah. The railroads don't really want them, probably never really did. But they got tax or emissions credits for using them. The credits program is expired, so the railroads no longer have any reason to keep the gensets.

 

[richard carr]

I've just spent another weekend in the US, so this time I managed to escape the office on Friday afternoon and drove six hours to Marysville Ohio, about 20 miles north west of Columbus. There is a line through the town, it runs from Toledo via Findlay to Columbus for CSX, it doesn't see much traffic a few trains a day, but certainly one at 5am on Saturday morning which did it's best to wake the whole place up !

The plan was the to drive over to Delaware, about 20 miles east of Marysville, here you get 3 different lone through the town, CSX from Columbus to Toledo via Fostoria, NS from Columbus to Bellevue and CSX from Columbus to Cleveland via Greenwich.

I had been checking the weather all week and Friday it forecast 2 beautiful days in Ohio, what a load of rubbish that was, Saturday morning looked grim and bleak I drove over to Delaware and it didn't look any better, in fact it looked like it was going to pour down at any moment.



This is the CSX route to Cleveland, no sign of any activity here.



This is the NS route north to Bellevue, right next door to the CSX route Cleveland, nothing going on here either and it's beginning to rain.

I stood there for half an hour, nothing at all, so I decided to cut my losses and try the CSX line to Fostoria.

Great more red lights looking south.



Nothing looking north either and it's raining harder now.




Then it poured down, so I headed north to Marion, where the NS line and this CSX line run parallel through the town for while.



It's 40 minutes to Marion, the lines all come together at the former Union Station. Parked on the far side was this SD40.

It looks like they were getting ready to renew one of the crossings there.









Then it started to pour with rain, but at least a train turned up





After that gone by it was time to go, it was just pouring down.

The next stop would be Carey, there's a big quarry there served by the Wheeling and Lake Erie RR.

The rain stopped a few miles north of Marion.

 

[richard carr]

I headed north out of Marion, the rain soon stopped and up ahead I could see freight cars in the distance. There was an ethanol plant up ahead,



Cars waiting to go into or leave the plant.



This load of cars were just parked in a siding



There was another crossing a bit further along, you could just make out the men working on the track, not a good sign that trains are about to arrive.



I kept heading north. I came across this in Harpster, the switcher for a grain elevator.






I then carried on north to Upper Sandusky, as I crossed county road 57 I could see that crossing gates were down and lights flashing, so I headed over there to find a green signal southbound




10 minutes later the the signal is still green and the gates are still down but no train, cars started going round the gates and in about 10 more minutes the gates finally went up.

I carried on to Upper Sandusky about 2 miles further north.

Here the line crosses the route from Lima for the Chicago Fort Wayne and Eastern and heads east to crestline where it has a junction with the CSX line to Cleveland and then carries on further east to Mansfield and Canton, I have no idea who's it is or how much traffic there is, it didn't look busy.

The grain elevator in Upper Sandusky has it's own switcher too.







Nothing appeared to be happening and the south bound signal was decidely red.





So I set off again for Carey, of course as headed out of town the southbound train went past, aw well you can't get them all.

 

[richard carr]

It wasn't far to Carey and I soon found the quarry. The SD40s were busy putting a train together but no rain as yet.





The conductor going to change the switches. The locos are goin to move forward so they can then reverse down into to the other side of the yard to pickup a cut of 19 loaded hoppers. Here they are heading to the end of that line of hoppers



They then had problem getting the cut of cars moving and had to start the second loco



After about 30 minutes they got them moving





They now pushed these back to add to the hoppers they had left behind, then the rain started, it just poured. I was shooting video and getting wet.

So that was it for Carey, the locos ran to the other end of the yard, which you can get access too but you can't see much from where you can park.

I headed to Fostoria.

 

[richard carr]

So after Carey I went to Fostoria about 25 minutes further north, it's now stopped raining.

I hadn't been there long before the first train arrived, this included the heritage liveried New York Central loco


I soon heard another horn, this time on the NS lines



An SD40 brought a local through at a good speed, the loco was running flat out.

I then caught up with Jim and arranged to meet him at Deshler, about a 30 minute drive away, I set off just as it started to rain again.

On the way there I got stopped at a grade crossing on SR613 to let the Coke Express empties head back to Pittsburgh.

The loaded Coke Express was parked outside North Baltimore it had the first responders loco on the front. Another east bound freight was waiting near Hoytville. As I arrived in Deshler I drove over the Toledo line and could see a train heading north so quickly headed to the rail park to catch it.







Jim arrived about 15 minutes later , but no more trains we left about 5:30 to go and get dinner.

 

[richard carr]

On Sunday the weather was just what the forecast said, hot dry and sunny a beautiful day, unfortunately I can't say about the trains.

I headed back towards Elkhart on I80, the quickest way to get there. The plan was to go to Warsaw Indiana and hopefully catch a train on the street running section just behind main street. I got bored with freeway so turned off once I got into Indiana and headed to Waterloo on the NS mainline.

No sign of a train there so I moved on to Kendalville.

I parked up and got out to check the signals, theres a green light.




So I waited, and waited but after half an hour there was still no sign of a train. I decide to move on, next stop Warsaw.

Warsaw is on the NS line from Goshen to Indianapolis, about 22 miles south of Goshen, it seems to get about 10 trains a day, so there was a good chance I wouldn't see one.

This is the view south, I'm in the CVS car park behind me, you can just make out the crossing with the Chicago Fort Wayne and Eastern.



This is the view looking north



So no train but people were gathering to watch a parade celebrating the US's 250th birthday.

I headed north to Milford Junction where this line crosses the CSX main

At last a train, but a very short stack train



The lower signal was flashing green, indicating that the train was crossing tracks ahead.





10 minutes later the signal started flashing green again

This time it was manifest train and it was changing tracks too.



The second loco is an SD70 AC







Once that had gone past I heard a horn in the distance on the NS line to Goshen. I did think about hurrying back to Warsaw but I suspect that I would have missed there if I had decided to go, so I waited for it at Milford .



I then drove to Goshen, there were no trains their either so there was probably some track repairs taking place on the NS main.

So that was it for this trip I drove back to Chicago doing my best to avoid the collisions causing delays on I90 and I94.