Scott Named Chairman of OmniTRAX

Cameron Scott has been named as chairman of the board of directors of short-line railroad holding company OmniTRAX.

Scott previously served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Union Pacific before retiring and joining the OmniTRAX board in 2019.

In a news release, OmniTRAX said Scott will be expected to help the company shape its new growth strategy as the regional and short-line operating company accelerates its adoption of rail-based supply chains.

OmniTRAX acquired added three new rail properties last year and now owns 23 properties that interchange freight with seven Class Is throughout North America.

Among those is he Cleveland and Cuyahoga Railway, which comprises the former Cleveland Commercial, and the Cleveland Port Railway.

OmniTRAX to Acquire Cleveland Commercial

The Cleveland Commercial Railroad is being acquired by OmniTRAX in a deal expected to close this week.

The sale price was not disclosed. As part of the transaction, the CCR will be renamed the Cleveland & Cuyahoga Railway while the CCR’s subsidiary Cleveland Harbor Belt Railroad will become the Cleveland Port Railway.

The CCR operates on 35 miles of former Wheeling & Lake Erie and Norfolk Southern (Erie Railroad) track on the southeast side of Cleveland while CHB handles switching at the Port of Cleveland facilities on Lake Erie.

Primary commodities handled by the two short lines are steel, scrap metals, grain and chemicals. The CCR interchanges with NS and the W&LE while CHB interchanges with NS and CSX.

OmniTRAX already operates the Newburgh & South Shore Railroad in Cleveland. It also operates the Northern Ohio & Western Railway near Toledo.

“We look forward to working with the Port of Cleveland and are confident our partnership will lead to significant growth in both marine and rail activity,” said OmniTrax CEO Kevin Shuba in a statement.

“We expect the partnership with the Port of Cleveland will be another example of the success OmniTRAX and its partners have achieved when rail and maritime work together.”

David Gutheil, chief commercial officer at the Port of Cleveland said his agency will work with OmniTRAX to build on-dock rail business.

The Cleveland Commercial Power Fleet

On recent beautiful but chilly Sunday, I was in Glenwillow and joked with my friends about seeing a Santa Fe locomotive.

Huh! Santa Fe? Yep, we were seeing it right. Anyway it made for some good conversation as to why it may be here and I’m sure there is a logical reason.

I am no photographer by any means but I did take a few photos of the Santa Fe unit along with the other two locomotives that were parked there.

I know the photos were taken through some trees but I tried to capture the numbers and writing on engines without drawing too much attention or trespassing on railroad property as there were other curious people out and about walking and watching us and the engines.

Oh well, just thought I would share a happy moment with you. In my travels I find many people really enjoy seeing or watching a passing train, especially one with a bright cool paint scheme.

Photographs by Gary Laurenzi

Catching Up With the Cleveland Commercial

Here comes the Cleveland Commercial job bound for Cleveland making its way through Bedford.

If I want to see a train but don’t want to drive a long distance, I go to Bedford. The city created a small children’s park on Palmetto Street, which runs parallel with the Cleveland Line of Norfolk Southern.

Railfans have been known to park in the small parking lot of the park to watch trains go past.

The “tot lot” as it’s often called, is about a half-hour from my home and if there is something out of the ordinary coming on NS I might buzz down to Bedford to catch it.

Such was the case earlier this week when NS No. 4000, the DC to AC conversion locomotive with the blue nose came through town leading train 11K.

But before the feature train of the day arrived, the Cleveland Commercial Railroad put in an appearance.

The CCR uses the former Conotton Valley, which for much of its life was the Cleveland line of the Wheeling & Lake Erie. Later, it was the Nickel Plate Road and then Norfolk & Western.

It eventually reverted back to the modern W&LE, which has been leasing it north of Glenwillow to various short line operators, the CCR being the latest.

At times before an Akron Railroad Club meeting, Ed Ribinskas and I have hung out at the tot lot, primarily to see NS in action, but we never minded when the CCR came along.

During one of those sightings the CCR train was rocking back and forth so much that I thought it might derail.

That prompted us to dub the CCR “the rock and rollers.” I wish I had a video of it.

It has been quite a while since I last saw the CCR and as I was waiting for the NS 11K to get the OK to head west through a single-track work zone, we heard horns in the distance.

Your best opportunity to catch the CCR is during late afternoon when the train to Cleveland rumbles through.

Apparently, the CCR has done some track work because the train was hardly rocking and rolling at all.

Of course with short lines such as the CCR, track conditions are relative. The track is still slow speed, but better than it was.

All but one of the cars being toted by the two locomotives of the CCR were gondolas. My guess is that most of them will be filled with scrap metal.

You won’t see ethanol, crude oil, grain, automobiles, containers or coal traveling the rails of the CCR. Perhaps it handles some boxcar traffic, but I don’t see its operations enough to know that.

Those gondolas are batter and bruised, having been around a long time in industrial service. Yet those that fill then have a need for rail service and the CCR provides it, presumably well.

Railroads such as the CCR serve a niche in the American railroad scene. They may not get the attention that the Class 1 and large regional roads get, but their work is no less indispensable to shippers and interesting to observe.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

The motive power for the CCR is former Union Pacific and former Santa Fe, both in their original colors with the ex-ATSF unit still wearing Santa Fe markings. The unit, though, is owned by LTEX.

I thought this image of the CCR train and its gondolas summed up what this railroad is all about.

As the CCR train was in Bedford, NS train 68D, which had a load of limestone bound for Shelly Materials in Twinsburg, also passed by. The head end of the CCR job can be seen just beyond the signals on the NS Cleveland Line.

Looking southward toward the head end of the NS stone train and the rear end of the CCR train. It is not common to get a CCR and NS train at the same time.

Scenes from Cleveland’s National Train Day

An overview of the equipment display at Cleveland’s National Train Day event as seen from the parking deck next to City Hall. on top of the bluffs overlooking Lake Erie.

Cleveland held its first National Train Day celebration on Saturday, May 9 at the Amtrak station along the lakefront. Other events were held at the roundhouse of the Midwest Railway Preservation Society in Cleveland as well as in Sebring and Alliance. At the Cleveland Amtrak station, Norfolk Southern had a pair of locomotives along with a caboose painted in Conrail colors and markings. Reportedly, this was the last caboose built for Conrail. Also on hand was a locomotive used by the Cleveland Harbor Belt, which is a subsidiary of the Cleveland Commercial Railroad.

Photographs by Roger Durfee

You wanted trains on National Train Day? There were several trains to be seen.

Norfolk Southern ran several trains past the NTD festivities. Although not shown, the Southern Railway heritage locomotive made an appearance, albeit in a trailing position.

NS 4658, an Operation Lifesaver unit, is a GP59. It was accompanied by slug No. 615, which is now classified as an RP-E4C.

Conrail caboose 21313 as seen from the parking deck.

Cleveland Harbor Belt 2639 is a former Missouri-Kansas-Texas GP39-2.

A Waterfront line RTA car cruises past the Cleveland Amtrak Station and in the background) First Energy Stadium.

A Conrail EOT.

Some railfans record the passage of an RTA Waterfront train.

Amtrak passengers must cross the RTA Waterfront line tracks to board their train. These grade crossing flashers warn them of an approaching RTA train.

John Barnett, a former Conrail dispatcher and operator at Berea Tower, is all smile as he poses from the cab of NS 615.

Paul Berg, one of the co-organizers of the Cleveland National Train Day, is interviewed by WJR-TV in Cleveland.

Ryan Durfee, the son of ARRC member Roger Durfee, tries out the controls of an NS locomotive.

Don Wetzel was one of the men connected with the New York Central’s M-497 jet powered Rail Diesel Car project in 1966. He was on hand to talk about his involvement in the project.

A helmet worn by crew members during the test run of the jet-powered RDC.

A Train, er, I Mean a Depot is Coming

The excursion train from Glenwillow to Kent on July 5 rolls past the former Wheeling & Lake Erie passenger station in Kent. It would be the last passenger train to pass the depot in the location where it had sat for 133 years.

On Sunday, July 27, it appeared as through the Kent depot was moving down the tracks as the station was maneuvered to a new location on the west side of the railroad.

Roger Durfee was on hand this past Sunday for the moving of the former Wheeling & Lake Erie passenger station in Kent to a new location. It turned out that the last train that he photographed passing that depot was, appropriately enough,  a passenger extra powered by Cleveland Commercial power headed for the Kent Heritage Festival on July 5. Additional photographs that Roger took of the depot’s moving day will be posted on this blog on Wednesday.

Photographs by Roger Durfee

 

Chasing that Glenwillow to Kent Train

Here are some of my photos from the Falls Junction (Glenwillow) to Kent trip, which was sponsored by the Midwest Railway Preservation Society. I did the entire chase southbound and rode northbound. The weather was generally crappy, but that did allow some afternoon photos without the harsh summer afternoon high sun. This was also a rare offline move for the Cleveland Commercial Railroad power over Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway tracks.

Photographs by Roger Durfee

Waiting to depart Falls Junction.

Passing under the NS Cleveland Line in Streetsboro. A Heritage unit above would have been sweet.

A couple miles after the above photo, still in Streetsboro. Went for something besides the normal crossing wedgie here.

Passing the Kent depot.

Backing down the connection between the W&LE and the former Erie main in Kent.

Waiting to depart at the Erie depot in Kent. Freshly lettered CCRL 2372 will lead the northbound run.

Some of the Kent Heritage Festival crowd in downtown.

Rearranging the consist in Kent.

People enjoy the nice park down by the old dam as the CCRL power rolls by above.

Same shot as above, but this time showing the dam.

Probably my favorite photo of the day, a CSX eastbound meets the CCRL train as an attentive audience looks on.

The sun peeked out once the train stopped at Falls Junction.

Richard Jacobs and Barbara Cormell on the northbound run. Good to see you two!

 

 

 

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto

The late afternoon Cleveland Commercial Railroad train trundles through the town square in Bedford on a Friday afternoon.

The Cleveland Commercial Railroad is one of those local operations that you tend to take for granted and make little effort to document. That’s unfortunate because the CCL tracks are about a half-hour from my house and the northbound Monday through Friday train has a fairly reliable schedule.

The crew comes on duty at Falls Junction in Glenwillow in mid to late afternoon and the train passes through Bedford at about 5 p.m.

On a recent Friday afternoon, I was hanging out at the Beford Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks watching and photographing trains on the adjacent Cleveland Line of Norfolk Southern.

I heard a horn that I knew was the CCL train heading north. I scurried over to the former Wheeling & Lake Erie passenger station on the Bedford town square.

I had barely enough time to jump out of the car and shoot because the train was almost on top of me.

A couple months ago, the CCL picked up LTEX 2519, a GP35u that had been built in March 1964 for the Santa Fe. It is the type of four-axle power that was once common on Santa Fe locals all over the system, including on the railroad’s web of branches in Kansas.

Did No. 2519 ever work in Kansas? I can’t say for sure, but it might have. Now it is enjoying a second life in Northeast Ohio running over former Wheeling & Lake Erie and Erie Railroad tracks.

Coupled with the 2519 was LTEX 2372, a GP39-2 built in June 1984 for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) and later repainted in Union Pacific colors. Although the UP lettering and logo have been painted over, the 2372 still has a UP appearance.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

LTEX 2519 is the trailing unit on a CCL light power move in Bedford. Note that the crossing gate for the next grade crossing is just dropping as the train slowly makes its way north.

A side view of LTEX 2519 taken on March 28 in Beford. Unlike LTEX 2372, which has lost its Union Pacific lettering and logo, the 2519 still proudly proclaims itself to be an Atchison, Topke and Santa Fe locomotive.

Heritage Sunday at NS Motor Yard

One of these locomotives is a “heritage” unit. Can you guess which one? NS 3401 and 3405, both ex-Conrail, pass LTEX 2519 at Motor Yard.

I stopped at work (Motor yard) on my way on Sunday morning up to the Division 5 train show in Kirtland and was rewarded with two “heritage: units.

The first one was the Norfolk Southern No. 1065, the Savanna & Atlanta unit, which was leading an eastbound 64R oil train.

It was the same train that I had photographed in Toledo the previous Sunday heading west for loading in North Dakota. Like the Toledo encounter, the light wasn’t the best given the overcast and early hour. But I took a few photos anyway.

The second heritage unit wasn’t an NS locomotive. The Cleveland Commercial Railroad was getting a “new” unit from LTEX and after several round trips on CSX between Willard and Cleveland, the powers that be at the CSX Collinwood Yard finally figured out where to sent it and had CSX local Y122 drop it off at Rockport.

It made its way to Motor on the BX44 on Friday night and we delivered it to the CCRL on Sunday.

Sporting a decent coat of Santa Fe blue and yellow qualifies this former BNSF GP35 as a “heritage unit” in my book.

I took a few photos at Motor as they ran around the unit for the trip to Von Willer on the BF10, then went to CP 117 to watch them do the hand off to the CCRL crew.

Article and Photographs by Roger Durfee

LTEX 2519 with the BF10 power next to it.

It’s a pretty clean machine on the engineer’s side. There is some tagging on the other. Plans are to power wash that off.

C 5 is a former Erie cement milepost. That’s five miles from the old Erie Riverbed yard where their Huletts were located.

CCRL No. 2372, a former Katy GP392, has coupled onto the 2519. That’s the BF10 in the background departing the interchange on this ex-Erie Railroad track.

First up was actually the 64R with the S&A unit passing outside the Motor Yard office.

Shooting in a Winter Wonderland

The first train of the day was a westbound CSX manifest freight that we caught on the Middlebury Road bridge west of Kent.

On Sunday, Dec. 30, I met up with fellow Akron Railroad Club member Roger Durfee and we went out in his jeep to do some winter photography in Northeast Ohio.

The chase began with a drive past Brittain Yard in Akron. Nothing was stirring on the Wheeling & Lake Erie, so we decided to mosey north along the W&LE’s Cleveland Subdivision to see if there was evidence of a train having passed. The indentations in the snow at the grade crossings indicated that there something had rolled over these rails not too long ago.

We heard a westbound CSX train on the scanner and decided to hot foot it for the bridge carrying Middlebury Road over the CSX New Castle Subdivision. This is the Chicago-Pittsburgh mainline of the former B&O.

As luck would have it, the last car on the train was a boxcar. While processing this image this morning in Photoshop, I discovered that it looked virtually the same in black and white as it did in color. So I left it in B&W.

After the passage of the l-o-n-g westbound CSX manifest freight, we resumed our hunt for the W&LE train. It seemed too early in the day for that train to have left Akron for Falls Junction in Glenwillow, but this was the day before the day before a holiday and perhaps schedules were all out of whack.

The CSX road channel came to life again and we heard a train calling a signal at Kent. RAD wasn’t sure if we had enough time to get back to the Middlebury Road bridge, but he gave it a shot. Call the “race” a tie.

I jumped out as we got to the crest of the bridge, which is located coming out of a curve if you are headed southward. I got a going away shot of the intermodal train as it approached a clear signal at CP 120, which is a set of crossovers that have been installed in the past year as part of the upgrade of the New Castle Sub to handle double stack container trains. That work hasn’t been completed yet.

As we were approaching the bridge, he had heard another train call an approach signal east of Kent. This meant there was a third westbound in the picture. We stayed put until the passage of that train.

The third of the flurry of westbounds was also an intermodal train. Both intermodal trains had long strings of empty spine or well cars.

With CSX going quiet again, we resumed the search for the elusive W&LE train. As we headed north (again) we heard the W&LE dispatcher talking to a track car. We also heard the dispatcher talk with the crew of a train, saying that the bus would be a little late in getting to them.

That suggested that the train to Falls Junction had, indeed, gone north early today and that the crew would be picked up and returned to Brewster. More than likely, it also meant that the W&LE train would be sitting at or near Falls Junction.

Roger decided to take Ohio Route 43 north and as we crossed the Norfolk Southern tracks in Twin Lakes, we spotted an eastbound manifest freight on the Cleveland Line.

After capturing the NS train, we continued the search for the Wheeling, figuring that perhaps it would be parked next to the depot at Glenwillow, which is undergoing a restoration. We zig- zagged our way along the tracks, stopping a couple of times to get some winter shots. It was snowing heavier the farther north we went as we got into the fringes of the Lake Erie snowbelt east of Cleveland.

The W&LE train wasn’t at the Glenwillow depot. But we did find it parked in an industrial park that the W&LE serves that is located on the remains of the Chagrin Falls branch.

After capturing the Wheeling train on megapixels, we returned to Falls Junction to get a few shots of the Cleveland Commercial Railroad power spending the weekend snoozing in the snow. The CCR usually does not operate on weekends.

It was nearly noontime. We headed back south, stopping at a Steak and Shake at Streetsboro to get some sandwiches to go. We ate them while sitting next to the NS tracks at Towner’s Woods Park.

The radio was quiet. After about an hour, we heard some scratchy transmissions on both the CSX and NS road channels. Much to our surprise and dismay, a westbound NS train suddenly appeared. But the element of surprise caught us off guard and we didn’t get any photos. Usually, you can hear the Rootstown detector go off from here, which provides plenty of warning to get into position. But not today for some reason.

Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. The trailing unit was one of the few original Conrail locomotives still on NS. Roger said had we missed that train with the Conrail unit in the lead he would have been upset.

We moved into Kent and took up watch on the Main Street bridge. We got two eastbound trains before calling it quits for the day. The lighting conditions were horrible with heavy overcast. It had long since stopped snowing. Still we were pleased with our results for the day.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Snow dusts the tops of a string of tank cars as the westbound CSX manifest freight passes through CP 120 on the CSX New Castle Subdivision.

As luck would have it, the last car on the westbound CSX manifest freight was a boxcar.

The second of the three CSX westbound trains that we caught at Middlebury Road was this intermodal train, which is about to take a clear signal at CP 120

Would you like a little frosting on your container?

The third of the westbound flurry that we photographed at Middlebury Road on CSX. This train was running on the block of the train ahead and getting approach signals indications.

An eastbound Norfolk Southern manifest freight emerges from a cloud of snow at Twin Lakes.

 

The eastbound NS train is about to pass beneath Ohio Route 43. Note that the second unit is a Union Pacific locomotive.

 

While following the W&LE tracks northward to Falls Junction, we took the time to get some snow images. Shown is the W&LE Cleveland Sub tracks looking railroad south.

The W&LE train we had been seeking was parked in the industrial park on the reamains of the Chagrin Falls branch.

The Cleveland Commercial Raiilroad usually doesn’t operate on weekends. Two CCR locomotives collect snow on the siding at Falls Junction.

Back in Kent, the snow had stopped falling. An eastbound auto rack train passes the former Erie Railroad depot.

The last train of the day was like our first train of the day — a long manifest freight. An eastbound CSX train glides along the Cuyahoga River in downtown Kent.