Richard's American Train Adventures

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

Wow, that's impressive, I guess it's a huge country and all that. It makes sense unlike the UK and it's measly 8% or rail freight.
Tony

Distance & all that, it counts in the USA. Plus the fact it's mostly a freight-oriented system that passenger traffic has to fit in with - apart from the commuter systems, mainly in the NorthEast States as far as I'm aware - whereas the UK network is passenger oriented & crowded, & freight has to fit in as best it can.
I was in road haulage for years, the food & drink supply chain for a lot of that time, and whilst there is some use of rail especially by Tesco, the size of the UK & 50 years of road development just doesn't make rail economic for much of that particular traffic. An article about it in an industry paper, by Tesco decision makers, basically said that if they could transport their stock by rail profitably, they would. I believe they now run 10 rail routes, so it is something they are trying to do.
The UK loading gauge also restricts rail freight - special low-riding wagons had to be built to accomodate 'hi cube' ISO containers in the UK. Photos of double-stacked American container trains always make me smile! Admittedly, there are loading gauge restrictions for those in some US States, again, more in the East where infrastructure is older, there are more tunnels and they're lower.

 

[richard carr]

Saturday morning I meet Jim at the hotel at 7:30, it was still below freezing and both of agreed that being able watch trains from the car was the main priority, so we headed to Bellevue.

Bellevue has a complicated layout, there are 2 Ys, one just south of the yard and a second one about half a mile further south.
The first one allows traffic from Toledo and Fremont to enter the yard or turn south and head towards the second Y. At the second Y you can trun right to head to Fostoria and Fort Wayne on the the former Nickell Plate route or head south to Columbus, but it does mean that traffic off the NPR can turn left and head to Columbus without passing where we were ! Everything is NS, except that the Wheeling also comes in from the

It's usually pretty busy on a Saturday morning and we had seen this coal train as we drove into the town, it's taking the southbound leg of the Y and heading to Marion and Columbus.






A pair of UP pushers on the back




A manifest heading towards Fremont/Toledo, although it cold turnoff at Oak Harbour and take the NS mainline west




The wider view with the railpark viewing platform n the right



At the same time as the manifest was heading west this arrived from Columbus




The view south, somethings coming with the yellow over red signal. In the distance you can make out the signals controlling access off the second Y.



And now looking north into the yard from the same location, everything is red. The train in the distance is one of the high nose SD40s that they use for switching in the yard.




And here's the train.

 

[Scale7JB]

Great couple of days. GP40, GP60 and Jim!

JB.

 

[Big Train James]

Great couple of days. GP40, GP60 and Jim!

JB.

Let's not get carried away.

 

[Stephen]

Let's not get carried away.

We’ll have start leaving Trip Advisor ratings of time spent with you to ratify JB’s statement…

 

[richard carr]

Yes JB it was a great couple, but we are only just started on Saturday.

The next train up was this, another manifest off the Freemont line



Quickly followed by another manifest that appears to head south, but more on this one later.



Now some tanks arriving from the freemont direction.



Tank couplers



Then a stack train headed in that direction



Then a bunch of railfans appeared on the other side of the road, clearly waiting for this.



So that was it for Bellevue, we decided to head to Fostoria, Saturday afternoons had generally been very good in the past, hopefully they would be today.

 

[richard carr]

So it's about 45 minutes to drive to Fostoria from Bellevue. Fostoria is south west of Bellevue so the roads do go directly there you need to head south, then west then south again then more west before you finally get on main road that takes you into Fostoria, where as the railway just goes straight there, so we did cross it a couple of times and as we approached Fostoria we pass the NS yard and saw the one of the manifests that we had seen in Bellevue a couple of hours ago. We managed toget ahead of it grab a quick photo it went past the rail park.



A coupler shot on the gondolas



A gondola and a tank



We heard another horn in the distance, this time a GP60 with a local heading to Bellevue, I did grab a video of this so this the best photo.



CSX then joined the party with a west bound stack train but we were in the wrong place to get a decent photo



Another horn in the distance, we were going to catch it by the grain elevators on the west edge of town, but we were too late for that so headed east towards the NS yard entrance. An SD40-2 with a GP38-2 on the local from Leipsic with steel coil cars. They were signalled into the yard.



We drove back to the rail park then we heard the next horn, this time it was CSX from Toledo coming round the corner to head to North Baltimore



SO that was it for Saturday, another excellent day with a wide variety of trains.

 

[Scale7JB]

SD40 and GP38, thats like two christmas' at once!

JB.

 

[richard carr]

Sunday I was flying back to the UK so had to be back at O'Hare by 2pm, the weather forecast had been for light snow. When I woke up on Sunday morning there was about an inch of snow covering the hotel car park.



So I set off about 7:30 to give myself plenty of time to get to Chicago.



It's not too bad and the roads were fairly clear as far as Edgerton. I found this parked up in the siding.



and it wasn't long before the barriers went down and this arrived





So I jumped back in the car and headed to Butler to catch the train there as the road follows the railway and I overtook the train a couple of miles out of the town.
It's starting to snow a bit more.



So now it was back in the car again and continue west, I passed the train a few miles out of town and continued on towards Kendalville.

It was starting to snow quite a bit more and once through Kendalville it was really coming down. I turned off US6 to head to Goshen on US33

then it all went a bit bad, we all slowed down to 20 mph, although it wasn't that bad.



24mph now.



Finally I arrived in Goshen and went to Martins supermarket, as I got out of the car, the train went by.



There's about 3 inches of snow in the carpark

Luckily once I made my way to US20 about 5 miles towards Elkhart, that had been properly plowed and gritted with hardly any snow, about 25 miles further west and all the snow was gone.

I stopped back at Pines junction, the Canadian Pacific 2 bay hopper train came through





It was still freezing cold and nothing much was happening in the yard so I carried on and made a quick stop at Des Plaines hobbies.



Then it was time to drop the car off and get the plane home.

 

[richard carr]

I'm back in the US, it's the March O Scale Meet in Chicago today, Jim, JB, Mick and Stephen are here too, so a fun weekend is now underway.
Yesterday JB, Mick and I went to Pine Junction Indiana. My February trip was an exploration of this area but the weather was brutal below freezing and a howling wind. I lasted 2 hours and moved on, it had been pretty busy but no where near as busy as yesterday turned out to be.

The weather was great sunny dry and reasonably warm just perfect for watching trains. We spent all day there over 8 hours and saw abut 100 train movements. I shot 170Gb of video and took over 500 photos (although I lent my camera to someone for an hour and he took me than me !)



We arrived there about 8:15 in the morning, this was parked in the CSX siding




This is the Coke Express, a train we often see in Ohio in Deshler Fostoria etc. It runs from a plant in Pittsbrugh to the US steel plant on the lefthand side of the tracks. It's going to move forward onto the S0uth Shore City Branch to the right and then do a full 180 degree turn to come back into CNs Kirk Yard where the US steel RR will take the cars for unloading. We were told it had been there sometime.

Also hiding away was a South Shore Freight, it too wa waiting to make the 180 degree turn into Kirk yard.



Coming into Kirk yard was a CN train, it's just passing over the CSX lines in the photo below looking towards Chicago.

 

[richard carr]

The CN train came into the yard down the hill on the far side, Mick hurried over to get the best shots as it arrived.



There was plenty of switching going on in the yard. Here it's an ex GTW SD40 and a GP40 taking taking cars up the hill, before dropping them back into the yard.





Next an east bound manifest arrived on the NS lines



A load of wheel sets leaving the yard



Then the Coke Express started to move off.



As that is happening a local with a load of oil tanks approaches in the distance



A GP38-2 running long hood leading



The Coke Express has now made it to the CN lines, crossing the CSX and NS lines and heading into Kirk Yard. Meanwhile a train of coal empties heads towards Chicago on the NS lines.



Next another train came out of the yard and headed up the hil, this time lead by a former EJ&E SD38-2

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

A load of wheel sets leaving the yard

Interesting - or as an ex-driver, concerning to see how few chains are holding those axles in place!
Yes, I can see how the rearmost chain is looped over several axles, thankfully including the rearmost one, but some in the middle don't appear to be restrained by anything more than each other. And also, yes I know how heavy they are - I had a 20ft container once which was at top weight; the load was railway wagon wheels on their own, not on axles, so they were loaded flat. I can't recall now how many were in the box, but it wasn't more than two layers of wheels deep. That truck felt SO much lighter after unloading!!

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

it's the March O Scale Meet in Chicago today, Jim, JB, Mick and Stephen are here too, so a fun weekend is now underway.

Enjoy yourselves lads - not at all jealous, in any way whatsoever, despite Stephen's photos for me of F-Units at the IRM, and the inside of Des Plaines.....

 

[richard carr]

The other loco taking it's train up the hill is this Bessemer and Lake Eyrie SD45 T2





And here the Coke Express finally enters the yard



Next the South Shore Freight gets going



He's heading to the yard too






Then Amtrak turned up, they are getting a move on through here.



A lull in the action for once, a chance to chat.



But it's not long before the next pair of locos are dragging a train up the hill.
This time an Illinois central liveried GP40 and a EJ&E SD38-2




The South Shore soon got booted out of the yard



Then this train arrived heading out onto the mainline, with an IC SD70 leading, followed by an Iowa Northern GP38-2, a CN GP38-2 then a couple more CN locos. With a consist like that this is almost certainly a transfer freight to Homewood yard on the former Illinois Central about 20 miles away.

 

[richard carr]

The next train to arrive was producing this cloud of smoke. It's the Indiana Habour Belt, with a train of steel coils.




A pair of GP38-2 hauling the train



Another CN train arrived in the distance, this consist has a former Montana Rail Link SD70 ACe Locomotive, the third one in blue.



More wheels going back to the yard this time



There were some nice tank cars on this train, here are a few of them










Then a steel arrived from the east on the NS lines

 

[Overseer]

There were some nice tank cars on this train, here are a few of them

Sulphuric acid tanks. Can be used for other acids but 1830 on the hazardous material plaques is sulphuric acid, lots used in nickel refining etc. Procor are Canadian, UTLX are US but basically the same ownership.

 

[richard carr]

Next a CSX stack train arrived from the Chicago direction



Then another Amtrak (and it's not even lunchtime yet)



It's now so warm Mick's lost his jacket.



658 is back taking another train up the hill



Along with Bessemer 907


Then a new pairing, the J's 703 a GP38-2, together with a Illinois Central GP40.
I have an MTH model of 703 (and 702) and recently weathered it based on a photo from 2015. It's orange paint work is now significantly more faded, although I suspect it will be years before it gets a repaint. You can also see that it has the short fuel tank, unfortunately the MTH models all have the long tank, something I need to fix.



These two locos were not switching, they headed out onto the main, most likely with another transfer freight to Homewood yard.



The south shore locos soon left the yard and headed back to the city branch, this leads down to the South Shore mainline a few miles to the east in Gary.

 

[richard carr]

The next train was this CN powered ethanol train, the far track is the siding where they often get parked to let other trains pass.



This one moved on very quickly



Then a stack train arrived on the CSX lines and another CN train waits to get into the yard



In the meantime the South Shore locos have sneaked back round the corner






More wheels



Then this turns up !



It certainly is oversize, look all those wheels at the rear

 

[adrian]

Then this turns up !

Who ordered the coffee refill?

 

[richard carr]

Next it's the turn of the Coke Express to begin it's return journey to Pittsburgh




This time I did move to a location where I could get a proper video of it.


The hopper cars use those new kadee couplers



I then returned to my original location, when something went bang in the distance



We have no idea what it was but there are a few petro chemical plants in that direction, fortunately the wind was blowing away from us.

Another train heading up the hill


An ACe powering a steel coil train, with another train arriving into Kirk yard in the background.



Then a CSX manifest turns up heading to Chicago






By now it is lunchtime, I volunteer to drive to Walmart to get refreshments and leave my camera in capable hands.