John Woodworth and I found Chessie System 4-8-4 No. 614 eastbound in Lowellville on June 27, 1981.The Greenbrier-type locomotive was pulling a roundtrip excursion between Akron and Pittsburgh as part of the Chessie Safety Express program.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
In its early years the Ohio Central used a livery that was reminiscent of a scheme used by the Nickel Plate Road. That was appropriate because tracks used by the OC between Harmon and Zanesville via Sugarcreek and Coshocton were once part of the NKP system.
Shown above is GP9 No. 99 with an excursion train in Dennison on May 24, 1994, sitting on former Pennsylvania Railroad rails. Toward the end of the Jerry Jacobson era of the OC, the railroad had a pair of F9A units painted in a livery similar to the pinstripe livery of the Pennsy from the 1950s.
Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders
Akron & Barberton Belt SW1500 Nos. 1501 and 1502 are leading an excursion train on the former Erie Railroad and later Erie Lackawanna mainline east of Rittman on Nov. 16, 1984. These became Akron Barberton Cluster Railway Nos. 1501 and 1502.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Conrail GP38-2 No. 8010 is westbound west of Massillon on May 11, 1985. More likely than not, this is an Orrville Railroad Heritage Society excursion returning from Pittsburgh.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
It’s Sept. 28, 1985, and a pair of Norfolk Southern high hood units are pulling an excursion train through Coshocton. We don’t have any information as to where this train originated or was going. If you know, drop us a line.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
A former Nickel Plate Road GP7L returned to service on Independence Day on former NKP rails.
No. 426 was one of two locomotives that pulled 30-minute holiday excursion trains from downtown Noblesville, Indiana, for Nickel Plate Express, a tourist train operator.
The geep was on the north end of the train. Saturday’s runs were the first for the locomotives this year and the opening of the season for the Nickel Plate Express.
The tourist train uses 12 miles of a former NKP branch that once extended from Indianapolis to Michigan City, Indiana.
Most of the line, whose heritage includes the Lake Erie & Western, has been abandoned including the segment from Noblesville to Indianapolis.
The 426 was built by EMD in July 1953 and retired by the Norfolk & Western in 1977. It then served a number of other owners, including the Peabody Company.
It was donated to the Indiana Transportation Museum in 2001, where it received a NKP livery. The locomotive is now owned by the City of Noblesville, which took possession of it after evicting ITM from its longtime home in the city’s Forest Park.
ITM used the 426 to pull its Indiana State Fair trains and other excursions and I photographed it pulling a Fair Train in Fishers in August 2011.
Because it was on the north end of the train the light made getting good images of the 426 a tough assignment. But it was a historic moment and I did what I could.
In the top image, No. 426 is shown trailing as the excursion train comes into downtown Noblesville during a ferry move.
In the middle image, a railfan photographer races down a trail over the White River to get into position to photograph the second excursion of the day leaving Noblesville.
In the bottom photograph, No. 426 and a former Santa Fe Hi-Level car sit on the bridge over the White River.
A pair of former Pennsylvania Railroad E8A locomotives lead an excursion train through Thompstontown Station, Pennsylvania, on the former Pennsy mainline between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Since it’s raining today I figured I would finish off 1987. On Nov. 1, 1987, the Blue Mountain & Reading ran a marathon excursion from Temple to Altoona, Pennsylvania, that included rounding Horseshoe Curve and turning at Gallitzin.
Just about the entire train was open window coaches. The BM&R’s former Pennsylvania Railroad E8A locomotives powered the excursion mixed in nicely with the Conrail freights. From what I remember the timekeeping was pretty good. Marty and Robert Surdyk did an excellent job scouting for some premier photo locations.
Crossing the Susquehanna River west of Harrisburg on the famous Rockville bridge.
Passing Hunt Tower in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
Conrail helper locomotives escort the special around Horseshoe Curve west of Altoona.
At the Amtrak station in downtown Altoona.
I’ve been going through my slide collection in recent weeks and scanning images to post online.
It’s been a diversion from the COVID-19 pandemic and brought back pleasant memories of what seemed to have been happier and less threatening times.
The photograph above of an Ohio Central passenger excursion train, though, is not one of those recent scans.
I scanned this image several months ago but have thus far refrained from posting it because of its lackluster quality.
Yet it’s the type of image in which I find myself taking solace these days and the fact that it’s less than ideal doesn’t matter.
I made this image on July 31, 2004, on a wood bridge at the west edge of West Lafayette, Ohio. The excursion originated in Columbus and was bound for Train Festival 2004 in Dennison.
It was one of several excursion trains I photographed that day during an event like few others I experienced in Ohio.
It was not an ideal day for train photography due to overcast skies and rain and drizzle. The slide is dark suggesting an under exposed image.
This photo has been sitting in a folder on my computer awaiting a decision to post it or delete it.
Sometimes a photograph has to wait for the right moment to be displayed, a moment when the content outweighs whatever technical flaws it has.
I was always a fan of the Pennsylvania Railroad inspired livery that Ohio Central FP9A units 6313 and 6307 had.
I once sat at a table with the late Jerry Jacobson at an Akron Railroad Club event and heard him say how much it cost to get those locomotives custom painted. I don’t recall the figure, but it wasn’t cheap.
Jerry talked about that expense in the same causal way that most people speak of how much they spent for dinner at a Bob Evans restaurant. In the scheme of things it isn’t that much.
I don’t have too many photographs of the Ohio Central FP9As in this livery and I didn’t see them operate very often.
Sure, I wish I had more photographs, but having regrets is as much a part of being a railfan photographer as bragging about what you did capture.
Everyone has missed out on something and everyone has something they wish that had more of than they do.
Everyone also can speak about days when they wished the weather and lighting had been better.
Having something is better than having nothing so although this isn’t one of my best images it reminds me of a day when I was there for something special.
There never was another train festival in Dennison or anywhere else on the Ohio Central like the 2004 event that was attended by 27,000 people.
Although the two steam locomotives that operated that day are at the Age of Steam Roundhouse, Jerry sold the FP9A locomotives and they can’t be seen in their PRR lookalike livery.
During the pandemic it is easy to think about what we can’t do.
It remains to be seen what end game the pandemic will bring, but for now we can look forward to some day resuming doing things we used to do without giving them a second thought.
Yet some things are not coming back. The steam excursions and other special movements that Jerry made possible may have lasted several years but in looking back on them now their time seems to have been rather fleeting.
Fortunately, our memories and photographs of those moments are not.
The former Norfolk Southern F units that Reading & Northern acquired will pull their first public excursion on April 18.
The railfan-oriented trip will operate 230 miles on a roundtrip between Reading Outer Station in Muhlenberg Township and Pittston.
R&N said the locomotives, former NS F9 No. 270 and F7B No. 275, will be adorned in their new livery for the excursion.
The excursion will be the first public trip to cross the railroad’s new bridge at Jim Thorpe Junction.
Tickets for excursion are on sale and cost $99 for coach with premium seating priced at $110. Open-air car seating costs $125, and “observation dome car seating” aboard R&N’s former Milwaukee Road full-length dome costs $150.
Two café cars in the consist will offer snacks and a light lunch. The excursion will take 12 hours and two photo runbys are planned.
For more information and reservations, go to http://www.RMBNRR.com or call 610-562-2102.
A while back I posted a story about a chase of an excursion train that I made between Springfield and Lima, Ohio, that was led northbound by a former Clinchfield F unit.
Here are two more images from that chase that didn’t make it into the original post.
In the top image the Clinchfield unit is trailing as the train heads southbound to return to Springfield.
The image was made at Clay Road south of St. Johns, Ohio.
In the bottom image the consist passes through a stand of color on each side of the former Detroit, Toledo & Ironton tracks at Santa Fe-New Knoxville Road north of Quincy, Ohio.
The excursion was sponsored by The Ohio Rail Experience and billed as a fall foliage special.
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 