One Day at Rymers Road on the NS Chicago Line

An eastbound coal train approaches Rymers Road.

One in a periodic series of images that I made last summer

I had never heard of Rymers Road near Port Clinton, Ohio, until I found myself on it late on a July morning.

Peter Bowler and I were railfanning the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern and it looked like it might offer some good views.

A talking defect detector is located just east of the crossing and traffic on the the road was moderate to light.

We would catch three trains here before moving on. Those included two eastbounds and a westbound. The latter was a manifest freight with Union Pacific motive power and probably came off the former Nickel Plate Road mainline in Cleveland.

It also had NS locomotive 8888. If that number sounds familiar it is because the May 2001 runaway train in Ohio that inspired the movie Unstoppable was led by CSX No. 8888, which earned it the nickname the crazy eights.

One of my prime objectives in photographing here was to convey a sense of being in the country. I do that a lot with my images because so many of them are made in rural areas.

But in this case I worked with the road and an adjacent cornfield.

We were able to get what we wanted in a half-hour time span. Then it was time to search for another rural location.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

 

 

Tags: NS 1034, NS 8888, NS Chicago Line, NS coal trains, Port Clinton Ohio, Rymers Road, Union Pacific locomotives, UP 7133, UP 7836