It Must Have Been Serendipity

On the day of the Akron Railroad Club’s end of the year dinner, I spent the morning in Pittsburgh with my friend Adam.

We were driving down the main drag of New Brighton, Pennsylvania, when I spotted something on the Fort Wayne Line of Norfolk Southern that I wanted to check out.

I had seen a Conrail caboose sitting on a siding attached to a work train. There was no locomotive with the train so it probably was sitting there for the weekend.

What a coincidence that on the day that I would be attending a program that evening about Conrail I would see a piece of Conrail.

It has been 17 years since Big Blue became a fallen flag, but traces of it still abound.

FRA Collects Record Amount of Civil Penalities

The Federal Railroad Administration has collected a record amount of $15.75 million in civil penalty payments this year.

In a news release, the FRA said its “enforcement of federal rail safety rules has led to the highest-ever civil penalty collection rate in the agency’s 50-year history, surpassing last year’s record-breaking rate.”

The FRA said that for fiscal year 2016, which ended on Sept. 30, the agency projects that it will collect 79 percent of the civil penalties it assessed on railroads, hazardous materials shippers and others for violating federal safety regulations.

That would be a 4 percent increase over FY 2015, and the largest percentage rate ever achieved by the agency.

Last year, more than 6,268 railroad company violations resulted in civil penalties.

A Few From a Late Year Outing in Berea

A railfan is in position at right to get a photograph of a westbound CSX intermodal train.

I took my camera with during a late November outing in Berea, even though I wasn’t expecting to photograph all that much.

There were no Norfolk Southern heritage units that were likely to come through when I was there and nothing out of the ordinary came past on CSX. Yet it was a mostly sunny day so I kept my camera nearby just in case I saw something interesting.

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the railroads didn’t seem to be quite back to their normal operations. All of the trains that I saw on CSX were intermodal trains.

But with CSX the way it is these days who can say what is normal. Nonetheless, on a typical day in Berea, CSX can be expected to send through at least a handful of manifest freights.

But none operated on this Sunday afternoon when I was around.

Although NS had a more diverse traffic mix, most of its offerings also were intermodal trains. The most unusual sight that I saw on NS was a tanker train with its lead unit running long hood forward.

The train had arrived at CP Max near Rockport Yard with three units, but the lead unit was cut off because the power desk needed to assign it to a train that needed cab signal leader.

I don’t know if there was any discussion about running a westbound train with a lead unit whose cab faced east. I just know what I saw when the train came through Berea.

With the sun low in the sky, I decided to stick it out until sunset. I was hoping to get a westbound on CSX with low light on the nose of the lead unit.

As the day got late, things starting falling into place to get the image I wanted.

The sunlight reflection on a signal box indicated that the lighting was just what I wanted. To the east I could see the headlight of an approaching intermodal train.

But clouds were gathering to the west and by the time the CSX train arrived, the sunlight was heavily filtered and I was unable to get the image as I had wanted it. I would been able to get it had the train had arrived a couple minutes earlier. Maybe next time.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

There seemed to be a lot of locomotives on this train.

I got the train, but the lighting was not as ideal as it had been a few minutes later. The filthy nose didn’t help matters, either.

Chasing the setting sun on CSX in Berea.

 

Passenger Car Group Awards Scholarships

An Indiana woman has received one of two scholarships to be awarded by the Railroad Passenger Car Alliance.

Sarah Eason, who is a volunteer with the Whitewater Valley tourist railroad in Connersville, Indiana, received one of the two Fuehring Fund scholarships for 2017.

The other recipient was Brett Rowan of the University of Calgary. Both will have the opportunity to learn more about passenger car maintenance and restorations.

The scholarships will pay for travel expenses, hotel accommodations and all other expenses related to attending the Passenger Car Alliance 2017 conference in January in French Lick, Indiana.

Eason is a brakeman for the Whitewater Valley and hopes to become a conductor.

Railroading as it Once Was: Yes, It’s Conrail

Conrail 5985, a former Erie Lackawanna GP-7, prepares to head west on the ex-EL in Akron in March 1978 with local PE-1. The Erie searchlight signal was still in use at this time as were the ex-EL mains. Nothing of the EL remains at this location today and all the buildings behind the train have been torn down.

Article and Photograph by Roger Durfee

N&W 611 To Pull Excursions in Spring 2017

Steam will return to Norfolk Southern rails in 2017. The Virginia Museum of Transportation said its Norfolk & Western Class J 4-8-4 No. 611 will pull excursions in Virginia and North Carolina in April and May with additional trips possible.

Tickets will go on sale in January for the excursions that will include:

• From Greensboro, North Carolina, to Roanoke, Virginia, via the former Southern Railway main line to Altavista, Virginia, and the former Virginian into Roanoke on April 22 to 23.

• Lynchburg, Virginia, to Petersburg, Virginia, on May 6 and 7.

• Roanoke to Lynchburg on May 27, 28, and 29 with trips up the Blue Ridge grade in the morning and up Christiansburg grade in the afternoon.

The 611 is slated to run on Jan. 6 from Roanoke to the North Carolina Transportation Museum where it will receive its annual maintenance.

I Wasn’t Sure What to Expect

One in a periodic series of images I made last summer

Peter Bowler had a vision that I was having a hard time grasping. He wanted to get a Norfolk Southern train or two crossing Sandusky Bay west of Sandusky in early morning light.

But to get the image that he wanted would require having to leave very early in the morning, like 4 a.m. I wasn’t enthusiastic about that.

We instead drove to Toledo with the idea of getting a train crossing the Maumee River. Alas, the bridge over the NS tracks carrying Miami Street was closed due to construction.

So we wound up at Sandusky Bay to try the photograph what Peter had originally envisioned.

I’ve been to Sandusky Bay a few times, but don’t know the territory that well. I got it in my head that we would standing almost next to the tracks and shooting an eastbound train coming toward us.

But that wasn’t what Peter had in mind and there probably isn’t a place to to that without trespassing on railroad or private property.

Instead, we found ourselves on an old road that juts into the bay and is used for fishing. It can also be used for photographing trains if you have a good telephoto lens.

By the time we got to the bay, the lighting conditions were pretty brutal. We were looking almost right into the late morning sun.

I immediately understood why Peter initially had said we’d have to leave so early.

So I did what I always do, which is the best I can with what I have to work with. It didn’t yield any spectacular images, but it did result in a keeper or two.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

One UPS Conveyance Approaches Another

UPS is one of America’s foremost shippers by rail. How formidable?

Consider that every day UPS ships more than 1 million containers and trailers by rail at a cost of $1 billion a year. That translates to 6 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

Those trailers and containers hold packages, which is the backbone of the UPS business. In 2015, it delivered 4.7 billion packages and documents.

Some of those items moved by rail and many, if not most, reached their destination aboard a package car, such as the one show here near Oak Harbor.

The vehicle is about to cross the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern, which is critical artery used by UPS in shipping containers and trailers by rail.

Could some of the packages and documents aboard this package car have traveled the rails that they are about to cross?

Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders

Chicago-Columbus Rail Route Planning to Start

All Aboard Ohio said Monday that enough funding has been raised to begin what it described as an alternatives analysis and public input process for a proposed Chicago-Columbus passenger rail route.

The Indiana Department of Transportation submitted an application to the Federal Railroad Administration in support of the planning process for the route.

In a news release, AAO, a rail passenger advocacy group based in Cleveland, said INDOT offered the locally-raised funds, totaling $350,000, to start the planning process as part of an arrangement with the FRA.

The initial planning work is to be completed by late 2017.  AAO also said the support of the Northeast Indiana Passenger Rail Association was also critical.

The Chicago-Columbus route would operate via Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Lima, Ohio, using large portions of the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s Fort Wayne Line, which hosted Amtrak trains until November 1990 when the trains were rerouted due to Conrail downgrading the route.

“There are only two rail corridors to the east of Chicago that lack heavy freight rail traffic and could offer the potential for frequent, reliable, 110-mph passenger trains,” said Ken Prendergast, executive director of AAO.

The Fort Wayne Line is one of those with Amtrak’s Chicago-Detroit being the other.

Prendergast noted that work is already underway to upgrade the Michigan corridor for 110-mph passenger service.

Still Flying the Flag 56 Years Later

There is something comforting about seeing a relic of the long ago past even if it is just a rusty hulk of its former self. I have had a lifelong interest in history so finding such relics is a way to see and almost touch something that I never was able to experience in its prime.

Such is the case with old railroad bridges that still wear the markings of a past owner. As this is posted in December 2016, it has been 56 years since the Erie Railroad operated its last train.

In October 1960 it merged with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western to form the Erie Lackawanna. Even that road has been gone now for 40 years.

Much of the former Erie in Northeast Ohio has been abandoned. Some rails are still in place, but have been out of service for many years.

Motorists traveling on North Forge Street in Akron, Ohio, can see a daily reminder of the Erie.

This bridge carried the Chicago route of the Erie over North Forge near Akron Junction. All of the mainline railroads serving Akron crossed over Forge in a two-block area with the Erie being the westernmost of them.

Today the former Erie bridge is silent. As best I can tell from looking at an overhead view on Bing Maps, there may be one set of tracks on the bridge, but otherwise the rails have been removed.