CSX has released a video showing its latest tribute locomotive, which pays homage rail safety group Operation Lifesaver.
OLI is participating in Rail Safety Week, which will be held Sept. 19-25.
The video can be viewed on the CSX page of the website LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6975590414485495809/
CSX has a new tribute unit on the rails. It repainted SD70MAC No. 4568 into a special paint scheme to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Operation Lifesaver.
The livery is alternating white and dark blue. The unit received the livery at the shops in Huntington, West Virginia.
Trains magazine reported on its website that the Operation Lifesaver tribute unit helped pull train M303 to Cincinnati on Tuesday morning.
Photographs of the OLI unit can be viewed at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/news-photos-csx-unit-marks-50th-anniversary-of-operation-lifesaver/
At least one of the CSX tribute locomotives is expected to be at the Lake Shore Railway Museum in North East, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 12 and 13.
The museum said on its Facebook page that it hopes to have all three of the CSX Pride in Service units that weekend but there is no guarantee that will be on hand.
Local fire departments and police departments will be bringing their equipment to the museum during the weekend and a night photo shoot is being planned.
Details on the latter will be announced later, the museum said. The night photo shoot will also focus on the museum’s GE-built Little Joe electric locomotive.
The museum will not be offering on-site parking during event. Visitors will need to park on nearby streets.
The designer of the CSX fleet of tribute locomotives has been doing drawings since he was a child sitting next to his grandfather.
Now Tyler Hardin is working with what is, perhaps, the ultimately canvass.
A profile of Hardin that appeared on the Trains magazine website noted that he is by day a worker at the Toyota assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky.
But at night he is a graphic designer whose work has appeared at high-profile railroading and railfanning events during the past several years.
Hardin designed the veterans tribute locomotive for the Louisville & Indiana Railroad as well as a logo commemorating L&I’s 25th anniversary.
He also did work for the C&O Historical Society, Kentucky Railway Museum, L&N Historical Society and the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation.
Drawing images of railroad freight cars and locomotives had long been his passion.
“The railroad is where I got my start as a kid, the CSX Cincinnati-Corbin mainline running in front of my grandparents’ house,” Hardin told Trains.
“I’d sit out (on their porch) and draw trains on old typewriter paper as they went by.”
He laughs about those drawings, now saying that they “look terrible when you look back on them.”
But his work has evolved and is now gracing CSX tribute locomotives Spirit of Our Armed Forces, Spirit of Our First Responders and Spirit of Our Law Enforcement.
Harden began approaching CSX about designing locomotives in 2015, eventually selling 10 of his works to the company.
But after E. Hunter Harrison became the railroad’s CEO, he stopped hearing from the company.
However, he had managed to cultivate a working relationship with Eric Hendrickson, CSX’s network planning and special projects director/
Hendrickson commissioned Hardin to design a special logo commemorating the newly-restored Clinchfield Railroad EMD F7 No. 800 and Clinchfield SD45 No. 3632 leading the 2016 Santa Train.
Hardin was also asked to design posters commemorating the event, which sold out their initial 5,000 sheet press run.
“It helps that he’s a railfan because you almost need that railfan mentality to do some of these things,” Hendrickson told Trains. “You can have a graphics designer, they can design you anything you want but it’s not going to really convey the message for what our industry is or what we’re trying to do and make it fit. Tyler understands that right off the bat … and he’ll draw it and it fits our needs perfectly.”
Hardin had created designs for commemorative schemes at CSX that Hendrickson had reviewed and liked.
That led to the final designs for CSX Spirit locomotives. Harden worked with CSX workers in the Huntington, West Virginia, locomotive shops, getting to know then by name.
“This is a dream job,” Hardein said about designing the Spirit units. “I’d love to do this full-time for them, design, photography, whatever, but just the fact that I’m doing it now, even at this level, is still like, if it were all to stop today, I’d still be beyond content just with what’s happened.”
CSX last week showed off its latest tribute locomotive, the Spirit of our Law Enforcement commemorative locomotive.
ES44AC No. 3194 received a special livery to honor the nation’s police officers. The livery was applied by a locomotive shop in Huntington, West Virginia.
In a statement, CSX Executive Vice President Ed Harris said the locomotive is a “moving tribute to the men and women who serve us every day and aligns with CSX’s goal to connect military service members, first responders and their families to the resources and support they need.”
CSX earlier this year released two other pride series locomotives, including the Spirit of Our Armed Forces and the Spirit of our First Responders.
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