Sunday Afternoon With NS

The nose of the lead locomotive of an eastbound stone train peeks through the vegetation.

These days a primary reason to hang out next to a busy Norfolk Southern mainline for several hopes is the hope of seeing one of the railroad’s 20 heritage locomotives.

That wasn’t the primary reason why the Akron Railroad Club held its summer picnic at the Willis Picnic area of the Bedford Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks system on Sunday. Yeah, we chose this site because it is next to the NS Cleveland Line, which is a very busy route.

Our hopes of seeing a heritage unit, though, were dashed early. Although three such units had been in Conway Yard in Pittsburgh earlier, none of them were going to be assigned to trains likely to pass by our location during the picnic.

But NS sent 28 trains by during our 11 hours in the park. Shown here is a sampling of the action from Sunday.

Photographs by Craig Sanders

A short stack train rushed past headed west.The view is looking west into the park.

The head end of another westbound intermodal train passes over the bridge of the street leading into the park.

The other side of the bridge from the park side. An eastbound RoadRailer approaches.

Getting up close and personal with the RoadRailer.

The trees made nice framing devices for the trains.

Another in the parade of late day westbounds.

Headed eastbound in the dying light of the day. It was the second to last train that we would see.

Tags: Akron Railroad Club, Akron Railroad Club picnic, ARRC picnic 2012, conway yard, Norfolk Southern, NS motive power, railfanning, stack train