Here are a pair of Conrail images from the archives for two for Tuesday. In the top image GP38-2 No. 8126 is in Alliance on Aug. 15, 1984. In the bottom image SD40-2 No. 6479 leads a westbound at Center Road in what is now New Franklin on May 3, 1980. In a few minutes this train will be in Clinton and likely head toward Orrville and beyond.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
Berea Tower operator Dick Lacy uses binoculars to check for traffic on the Chicago Line east of the tower on Oct. 8, 1994. I was on the property with permission as part of information gathering for an article published later in Trains magazine. It would be my first byline in the magazine. The Tower would close in February 1997.
Photograph by Craig Sanders
This Conrail caboose had been relegated to duty as a shoving platform by the time I made these images in Marion on May 23, 1999. In the top image the local is crossing the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern while in the bottom image the train is returning to the yard. The Conrail employment of these two crew members will end at the end of the month when they will retire, leave railroading, or go to work for CSX or Norfolk Southern.
Photographs by Craig Sanders
Somehow it got by all of us that this month marks the 45th anniversary of the Consolidated Rail Corporation beginning operations.
So to mark the occasion we set the wayback machine dial to the Conrail era.
It’s Aug. 15, 1984, in Alliance. SD50 No. 6742 is leading a train toward Pittsburgh via the Cleveland Line line through Bayard, Ohio.
Nearby is a set of helper locomotives sitting in the yard, GP38-2 Nos. 8132 and CR 8126.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Conrail GP40-2 No. 3400 is on the point of an eastbound intermodal train near Alliance on June 12, 1980. The unit despite its road dirt is still new having been built four months earlier. It would later go to join the Norfolk Southern motive power roster with roster number 3068.
Beloit, Ohio, lies at the top of what some railfans refer to as the Garfield sag. Located on the Fort Wayne Line, its long been a good place to catch trains on a line that was busy in Conrail days and remains busy under Norfolk Southern owernship.
We’ve dialed back the wayback machine to March 9, 1985, and landed in Beloit to relive the days of Conrail.
Conrail 5001, a GE B36-7 built in November 1983, is coming up the sag westbound as it passes through Beloit.
Not the signal bridge with Pennsylvania Railroad style signal heads that was still in place then.
The Conrail era had firmly taken hold when this image of GP38 No. 7839 leading an eastbound in Alliance was made in January 1984. The variation of past predecessor liveries had pretty much passed from the scene by now so that solid blue motive power consists were the norm. Conrail was, though, still a couple years away from marking its 10th anniversary.
It might appear to be a Union Pacific train, but it is actually a Conrail train approaching Massillon, Ohio, in the middle 1990s. Today the Fort Wayne Line in this location is single track and operated by Norfolk Southern.
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 