NS 8025, the Monongahela heritage locomotive, serves as the DPU on a 65R empty crude oil tankers train. It is shown headed west through Edgerton, Ohio, on Sunday, July 14, 2013.
Fellow ARRC member Peter Bowler and I had as our objective exploring Norfolk Southern’s Chicago Line in western Ohio this past Sunday.
We took a meandering route to get there, finally reaching Edgerton, Ohio, just after noon.
We were just in time for the high, harsh sunlight of the day and a westbound coal train that passed through just after we arrived.
We were standing next to a street near the tracks discussing our next move when we saw a headlight to the east. Another train was running on the block of the coal train.
The lighting conditions — such as they were — favored eastbounds, but we moved to the other side of south side of the tracks to see what we could make of the shot with the grain elevator.
After the head end passed, it quickly became apparent that this was a crude oil train. Peter had checked online about two hours earlier to see if any heritage units were going to be in the region.
He said the Monongahela unit had been reported on a westbound train, the 65R, but it was not leading. Then he said something about a DPU that I didn’t understand. Somehow I translated all of that to mean the MGA unit was in the trailing position on the head end.
We had no idea where the 65R was and I had not thought much about it. Now, here it was right in front of us and the MGA unit was the DPU unit.
After the 65R had passed and traffic began moving again at the U.S. 6 grade crossing, a car pulled over and an elderly couple asked us what that train was.
So we briefly explained the basics of crude oil trains running between North Dakota and Delaware, and about NS heritage units. They thanked us for the information and moved on.
After the 65R with the MGA unit in the DPU position passed, we saw the headlight of an eastbound and stuck around in Edgerton to photograph that train. We figured we had seen the last of the MGA unit.
Our next destination was Butler, Ind., where I wanted to check out a bridge that carries a county road over the NS Chicago line west of town.
I had heard about this bridge from Marty Surdyk, but had never been there, except passing under it aboard Amtrak.
In the meantime, the 65R had come to stop at Butler and we caught up with it just as the train was starting to move.
Perhaps we could get the MGA unit one more time. At this point, we didn’t know exactly where the bridge we were seeking was located.
Things were starting to look grim as we tried to get through town as fast as we could on U.S. 6. But the street had a 35 mph speed limit and a few traffic lights.
We could see the train by looking down the cross streets and see that it was gaining speed. At one point it looked like Amtrak speeding along.
As luck would have it, the ramp leading to the bridge we were seeking was on the west edge of Butler. We would not get there in time to photograph the head end power, but there was nothing out of ordinary about that.
The train was at least halfway past the bridge when we finally got stopped and jumped out. Another railfan and his young daughter were already up there taking photographs.
It didn’t take long for the DPU to come out from beneath the bridge and into my viewfinder.
The final shot of the sequence presented here shows the MGA unit about to pass through a set of crossovers. The 65R is on Track No. 1 and if you look closely down Track No. 2 you will see a speck that is the head end of an eastbound Canadian Pacific manifest freight that was waiting for the 65R to clear.
Once that occurred, the CP train would cross over to Track 1 and then get onto the former Wabash at Butler to head for Detroit.
Yes, we stuck around for the CP train, but I’ll show you those images in another story to be posted later this week.
Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders
The all white tank cars cut a swatch through the Indiana farmland west of Butler, Ind.
NS 8025 pops into my viewfinder.
The 65R is about to clear the crossovers west of Butler. Once it does, the CP manifest freight in the distance will cross over from Track 2 to Track 1.
Tags: Norfolk Southern, NS 8025, NS Heritage locomotives, NS heritage units, NS Monongahela heritage locomotive, NS Monongahela heritage unit
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