Richard's American Train Adventures

[richard carr]

Last weekend I was lucky enough to find the time to travel to Cincinnati, it is about 300 miles south east of Chicago and took about 5 and half hours to drive there from O'Hare airport.
The first port of call was the Union Station, it is a beautiful art deco building constructed in 1931. It is now a group of 4 or 5 museums, but you can get into the main building for free and the parking was free too.









The main classification yards are behind the station building, Tower A is a preserved signal box, unfortunately it is closed for renovation at the moment and I was told that it is unlikely to open before 2024.
You can't see much of the rail in Cincinnati itself, the lines are generally above you at the southern (river) end of the yards. The north side of the Ohio river is Ohio but the south bank is Kentucky.
So I headed over the river to Tim's Train and Hobby store, the CSX mainline south passes close by. One train was heading south as I arrived, you will be able to see that on the video once I have posted it up on youtube.
After this I headed to Erlinger, the Depot here has been restored and has a nice caboose.



The depot is at the summit of Erlinger Hill, a 7 mile steep climb south from the Ohio river. The hill is double track through out and there are a few places mid hill where you can get a good view as trains crawl up, often with pushers. I did video one going up hill and then drove to another spot behind a strip mall, so plenty of parking.
I found this train waiting to head down the hill, the crew had just arrived.



The train was well over 2 miles long as I had seen part of it parked about 2 miles away.

Once that had departed, it's on the video, It was 7:30 in the evening and I found a nice indian restaurant to get a bite to eat.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

On Saturday I meeting Jim at Hamilton Ohio about an hour away from Erlinger for me, so first I went back to the strip mall in Crescent Spring to see what was happening. It didn't take long before this arrived pounding up the hill.



It appeared to be a stack train, but half way along it it was a manifest too. There were 2 DPUs and a pusher. Here's the pusher working hard





About 20 minutes later the pusher returned light engine.





After this it was time to leave and drive to Hamilton. The tracks run right through the downtown area, I had arranged to meet Jim in the McDonalds car park.

Here's the link to the Hamilton Video

It was an up and down day, I had just coffee, (McDonalds is pretty decent if you ask me) and as I got back to the car a local turned up hauled by what I'm told is a GP40-2 running long hood leading. I didn't have a chance to photograph it and video it, so it's just on the video.

I didn't take many photo's at all in Hamilton, everything is pretty much on the video, but I did catch this pusher.










I also took some detail shots of 125 ton trucks



It was a good day, but after the first 2 trains we had a gap of 3 hours before the next one, fortunately Jim and I had plenty to talk about.
It did pickup in the afternoon and we had trains every 15 to 20 minutes.

We departed about 4pm, I had a 4 hour drive to Elkhart about 240 miles to the north west.

 

[JasonD]

Super stuff Richard. If any of you haven't been yet, get over there and have an unexpectedly good holid... vacation. As the charming young waitress in the Mojave breakfast stop, (about 2100 miles west of Cincinnati) over the street from the UP yard, said: "lerv those acksayunce"

Lots more please
Jason

 

[Oz7mm]

Richard

Given that 1931 (the build date of the station at Cincinnati) was the height of the depression, why was it built at that time?

John

 

[JasonD]

John, there's an excellent entry on Wikipedia. The 5 old stations regularly flooded so the Union Terminal was the solution. How it was funded is covered very briefly, seems like a company was formed for the purpose and funded by the 7 railroads. Not a prosperous project by the sound of it, but an impressive design.

History of Cincinnati Union Terminal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dog Star]

Richard,

Please explain... "stack train"? "manifest"?

thanks, Graham

 

[Oz7mm]

Graham

I think stack train is fairly apparent, it's where the containers are stacked on the wagons.

Google is your friend

John

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

"stack train"?

Probably short for double-stacked, as in container trains. When you consider the UK had to build special low-height wagons just to allow single containers on some of our teeny-tiny loading gauge lines, the thought of double-stacks is pretty mind blowing.
"Manifest" I think relates to a 'mixed' train of different cars carrying different products, as opposed to a bulk, single commodity train, so it needs a written manifest that lists the cars & their contents.
Container trains really count as bulk in railroad terms, since they're all going to one destination & what's in them is of no consequence (unless it's hazmat of course).

 

[Big Train James]

Graham,
Stack trains are the intermodal trains utilizing well cars with containers "doublestacked". Intermodal trains are typically dedicated, with only container or trailer ladings.

Manifest frights are mixed consists. You might see any sort of car type, any sort of lading, including the occasional double stack well car.

For the longest time, intermodal trains were kept very pure. They were among the highest priority trains, running on tight schedules. They essentially run point A to point B without interruption or reclassification.

Manifest freights are the opposite end of the spectrum. Trains are often reclassified enroute, dwell times are higher, nothing is as tightly scheduled.

What has happened in the past several years is a change in operating company philosophies. Intermodal isn't quite as untouchable as it used to be, and the move to increased train lengths and fewer crew starts means that trains more often get combined now.

The example in Richard's post with stacks up front followed by a pair of DPU's and a manifest is fairly common now. Especially when the single very long train is actually two shorter trains simply coupled together. At some point in its journey, that train will be split into two and the individual trains will head to separate destinations. Until then they are treated as one.

Jim

 

[Big Train James]

Hopefully you weren't threatened by that rather large, disreputable looking fellow lurking over on the side of the road at the 10:35 mark of the video!

 

[richard carr]

No he turned out to be really friendly and helpful for some reason.

 

[richard carr]

Now to Sunday, I was back in Elkhart and wanted to do a bit of exploring before our big trip in June. The Amtrak station is a great place to watch trains but it is to the north of the railway so the sun is rarely i the right place to take good pictures. So the first place I went to was the west end of the yard. You can follow the road by the side of the yard for about 2 miles, but parking is banned, but right at the end of the yard there is a grade crossing and on the south side there is a spot to park a couple of cars and then ther is a good view at the crossing of the west end of the yard.




I didn't have long to wait for this train of autoracks to speed on through.



This was then almost immediately followed by this 6 loco lashup with what was a relatively short manifest train.






I videoed this as it went by, you can watch it here.

After that 4 trains appeared at the end of the yard



But once these started up they headed back into the yard, it was time to move on to another location.

So next I went to the former grade crossing at McDonald street, there is plenty of parking and it offers a fine view on the line which is running north south at this point.

The first train was a stack train, there are loads of these through Elkhart every day.






This was quickly followed by a manifest train



This had only the one loco and it was very long. This was going into the yard



Then as I was just about to leave another manifest train came out of the yard heading south





It was just starting to spit with rain as the forecast had predicted, so I was now going to drive back to Chicago and spend the afternoon in Elmhurst on the UP mainline into Chicago, before getting my flight at 9pm

Richard

 

[richard carr]

It took about 2 and half hours to drive to Elmhurst and you get an hour back on the time change heading west, so I got there about 1:30pm.
It had already started to rain, pretty hard. As I arrived at the station this was heading into the yard.



I didn't get a chance to photograph the front of it.

There is plenty of parking on a weekend at the Metra station, which is right by the tracks. The rain was really coming down now and I was just sitting in the car watching watching and then dashing out for a quick photo as things went by. There is a 2 hourly passenger service on Sundays !



An empty coal train heading west




Then a stack train heading into Chicago






There were a few other trains and the metra's of course but I just sat in the car watching not wanting to get wet.

This is the video of trains on Erlanger Hill, shot on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning in Cincinnati.

 

[richard carr]

I'm in the US again, in fact I'm on holiday with my mates, 8 whole days of watching trains.

We flew into Chicago and drove to Elkhart, its a relatively easy 3 hour drive in traffic from O'Hare airport, and it has decent hotel in the centre of the town a 2 minute walk from the train station, you can even see the trains go by from your room if you are facing south on the higher floors.

As we drove into town to the hotel we saw that that the transfer freight for the Elkhart and Western railroad was just about to head up the branch, so we headed straight to the transfer siding to see what was happening. The answer was nothing, they just put the whole train including the NS GP38-2 into the siding, split the train so it didn't block the road and left it and went home.



We had a good walk around it to take some photos.
I also took a lot of photos of the switches as I need to detail mine, I also think I need to draw up some the rail guards like these.




This switch is self guarding



At some point I'll post all the track detail photos up on flickr if anybody should want them.

So at 8pm we went to the hotel to check in.

The next morning we were down at the station before 6 am, dawn was just breaking and just in time to catch the Grand Elk Railroad heading north.





We then followed the train to White Pigeon, but only just got there before the train, after that we lost him.

The video will follow shortly, but we are in Galesburg now and just heading out to see what is happening on a Sunday morning.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

Here's the link to the video of the Grand Elk train

 

[richard carr]

If you watched the video you will know that when we got back to Elkhart we caught the GP38 from the evening before returning to the yard.
As we waited by the station for the GP38 to cross the mainline into the yard, this arrived first



Followed by this



Then Amtrak turned up all at the same time.

Then the GP38 went home

After that we saw a maintenance crew arrive on the main curve at the east end of the station, they started messing with the track so nothing was going to happen here for a while. We went to Goshen about 8 miles down the road hoping to find the local shunting Brunk plastics, but it was no where to be seen. The line south from Goshen goes to Indianapolis, it sees about 10 trains a day, but it crosses the CSX mainline to Chicago at Milford Junction, so we headed down there.

As we entered the village, we crossed the tracks and in the distance saw a train heading north, butit slowed to a stop, so something else had to going by on the CSX line,




Once that had gone by, this headed north to Goshen



So we then moved the village to the CSX mainline, it is considerably busier and we didn't have long to wait before a train arrived.
After a couple more trains, this enexpectedly arrived, it is a GP40-2 with a road slug.





It only had 15 freight cars in tow, you can see the green signal on the opposite side, this was for the coke express, which seems to run at least twice a day to the steel works in Gary.




You can see how the light has darkened in this photo, we decided to head back to Elkhart and as we did the rain started.

 

[Scale7JB]

Just a little preview of all my photos from a great trip!



JB.

 

[Dog Star]

If you watched the video you will know that when we got back to Elkhart we caught the GP38 from the evening before returning to the yard. As we waited by the station for the GP38 to cross the mainline into the yard,

I have just used Google Satellite to look over Elkhart... huge comes to mind. After looking at the satellite view I am not sure that I understand "to cross the mainline"... can you explain?

I noticed out to the west of the yard that there appear to be two 180 degree curves so that engines (+trains?) can make a reversal of direction - what operational purpose is served by those tracks?

After a couple more trains, this enexpectedly arrived, it is a GP40-2 with a road slug.

Road slug? What does this mean?

regards, Graham

 

[Oz7mm]

Graham

Once again Google is your friend. 10 seconds of typing yielded this

Slug (railroad) - Wikipedia

John

 

[Dog Star]

Thank you John,

An informative read especially with the description of Snails.