Welcome to Akron Railroads

Welcome to Akron Railroads, formerly known as the Akron Railroad Club Blog, a site once connected with the Akron Railroad Club. The ARRC meets every month but December in Akron, Ohio, at the New Horizons Christian Church.

This site is not formally connected with the ARRC but instead serves as an archive of past postings about ARRC meetings and activities as well as railfanning adventures and photographs posted by some members.

Also included in the site are historical overviews of the railroads of Akron and Northeast Ohio as well as some news and information about current railroad operations in that region.

For more up to date information about the ARRC, visit the club’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AkronRailroadClub/

Steam Saturday: NKP 765 in Black and White: 4

Here is the fourth and final part of this series of Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 in black and white converted from color images. All three images were made on Sept. 9, 2010, in Medina.

Photographs by Robert Farkas

Old Order, New Order

It is October 1971 in Berea and Penn Central has been around now for more than three years. Yet the heritage of the past lingered as seen at the west end of the CP194 interlocking as a train in the siding is led by a former New York Central unit still looking like these tracks were property of the mighty oval. The train on Track 2 shows the state of the art of PC motive power with its minimalist appearance.

Photograph by Richard Jacobs

Sampling the AC&Y in Akron

Here is Akron, Canton & Youngstown FM H16-44 No. 206 in Akron. This image came from an early scan of a damaged slide.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Ancora Gains Backing of MOW Union

A Cleveland-based investment group seeking to take control of Norfolk Southern has landed the support of one of the railroad’s labor unions.

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said it supports board of director candidates advanced by Ancora Holdings as well as its proposed management team.

The union said in a statement that NS needs a change in leadership.

Union leaders said they have not been unable to get a commitment from the current NS management that any policy and procedural changes will be made that the union supports in the wake of a February 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that spilled hazardous substances.

The support of the maintenance workers union is unusual because most of the unions representing NS workers are backing the current management.

It also is a turnabout from a Feb. 22 post on the maintenance workers union website that characterized Ancora as trying to enrich itself at the expense of employees, shippers, and the public.

The AFL-CIO, Transportation Trades Department, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, and, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen are supporting the current NS management.

NS shareholders will vote on competing slates of candidates for the NS board of directors in early May.

MOW Worker Death Prompts FRA Bulletin

A fatal accident involving a maintenance of way worker has prompted the Federal Railroad Administration to issue a safety bulletin.

Regulators want railroads to provide adequate training for roadway workers who operate and work near maintenance areas; provide periodic oversight of compliance with railroad rules for roadway workers; empower employees to seek immediate clarification of any safety rule, including the right to challenge rules for roadway workers; ensure that employees understand the importance of job briefings, good communication between machine operators and roadway workers; and emphasize the importance of complying with railroad rules for working on or near maintenance zones.

The incident occurred when the worker was pinned by an excavator’s bucket.

The FRA bulletin did not identify the railroad or where the accident occurred, but it may have been referring to an incident on Union Pacific on April 11 when workers were repairing a washout on the Pine Bluff Subdivision in McNeil, Arkansas.

Ex-L&N SD40-2 in Warwick Yard

CSX SD40-2 No. 8239 and another unit lead a train eastward out of Warwick Yard in Clinton on April 18, 1997. The 8239 began life in October 1977 as Louisville & Nashville No. 3611. It would eventually be rebuilt by CSX into an SD40E3.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Sitting in Hornell

Buffalo Creek Railroad Alco S2 switcher No. 48 sits in the yard on the Erie Lackawanna in Hornell, New York, in August 1973. The Buffalo Creek was a shortline in Buffalo, New York, owned 50-50 by the EL and the Lehigh Valley.

No. 48 was built for the Delaware & Hudson where it had roster number 3002. The Buffalo Creek acquired it in January 1956. The unit was sold in May 1974 to scrapper Pielet Brothers.

Some railfans might remember seeing Buffalo Creek boxcars, which were memorable because they featured a sack of flour in a circular herald. It reflected how the short line served a grain district in Buffalo.

Photograph by Richard Jacobs

Michigan Mine to Use Autonomous Freight Cars

A Michigan mine is the latest to begin using self-propelled battery electric freight cars.

Carmeuse Americas is using the TugVolt cars at a limestone mine in Cedarville, Michigan, in the state’s upper peninsula.

The cars are being retrofitted by Intramotev. The retrofitting is being partly funded by the Michigan Mobility Funding Program.

Intramotev will deploy three TugVolt railcars to a new railway that will carry one six-car train of ore per hour.

In a news release, Intramotev said the operation will be the first real-world deployment of a battery-electric freight railcars capable of operating without a locomotive pulling them. It will also be one of the largest scale implementations of industrial robots.

The news release said using the technology is expected to eliminate up to 55,000 gallons of diesel consumption and 617 tons of vehicle-level CO2 emissions.

The new rail operation does not connect to the nation’s common carrier rail network and thus does not need Federal Railroad Administration approval.

Intramotev’s ReVolt car are currently in operation between Iron Senergy’s Cumberland Mine in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania., and its Alicia Harbor barge loading terminal on the Ohio River.

NKP 765 to Pull Indiana Rail Experience Trips

Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 will again be in action this year pulling excursions for the Indiana Rail Experience on the Indiana Northeastern Railroad.

The excursion schedule includes ice cream trains and tri-state steam excursions. 

Some excursions will run out of Pleasant Lake, Indiana, where the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society in 2023 purchased a former New York Central depot that it has renovated.

Other trips will start in Angola, Indiana, and Edon, Ohio. Some excursions will be led by diesel locomotives.

Visit the Indiana Rail Experience website for more information. 

OIG Urges Amtrak to Improve Communication

The Amtrak Office of Inspector General this week issued a report describing how the passenger carrier can improve its communication with passengers.

However, the report said possible steps to do that onboard trains was beyond the scope of the OIG’s inquiry.

The OIG report concluded that during 2022 and 2023 Amtrak was consistently deficient in timely communicating to passengers of en-route delays, shortening hold times, and reducing the proportion of abandoned calls.

The conclusion was drawn after comparing Amtrak’s performance with travel and hospitality industry norms.

However, the report did find that Amtrak improved its passenger communications after implementing text messaging advisories in March 2023.

Even then, the OIG investigation found that during during a two-week period later in the year passengers on delayed trains received communications at varying times or sometimes not at all.

In some instances, the texts were sent 12, 16, and 24 hours after the delays began.

The average wait time at Amtrak’s national reservations and information telephone number fell from 9.5 minutes in fiscal year 2022 to 5.5 minutes in FY 2023, but more than 900,000 of the more than 5½ million calls placed were never answered, and it took call center representatives more than a half hour to answer 200,000 calls.

In response to the OIG report, Amtrak said it has created plans to address weaknesses and expects to implement those plans by the end of this year.