The Marion railfans will meet on April 17 at 7 p.m. at Marion Union Station.
The program will have an open projector format with attendees invited to show their images in 20 to 40 minute segments of slides or digital images.
The event is open to all. Attendees must wear facial masks and social distancing will be enforced during the event.
A westbound Conrail train on the on ex-Erie on April 29, 1990.
Marion is one of Ohio’s most popular railroad hotspots. At one time four railroads crossed here, the New York Central, Erie, Chesapeake & Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Railroad consolidations of the 1970s left just three railroads and today there are two railroads using three rail lines.
Back in 1990, the railroads of Marion included Norfolk Southern, CSX and Conrail.
Here is a sample of some of Ed’s favorites photographs made in Marion in spring 1990.
A northbound CSX train on the former C&O. AC Tower still stood tall on the north side of the tracks in April 1990.
Riding an excursion train pulled by Norfolk & Western 1218 on NS (former PRR) tracks on May 20, 1990.
An eastbound NS train on former Pennsy, later N&W, tracks passing AC Tower.
The wayback machine has landed us outside of Northeast Ohio, but that’s all right because Marion is one of our favorite places to visit.
A three-unit set of Norfolk & Western locomotives heads northward across Penn Central and Erie Lackawanna tracks in June 1973.
From a railroad timetable perspective, this is a westbound train on what is today the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern.
It seems all too long ago when Norfolk Southern shut down its steam program, but what memories we have of those days.
At the time that the steam program was cancelled in 1994, Norfolk & Western 2-6-6-4 No. 1218 was being rebuilt in Irondale, Alabama, with a 1996 return to revenue service being planned.
Of course that work was halted by the cancellation of the steam program and No. 1218 was sent to Roanoke, Virginia, where it is on display at the Virginia Transportation Museum.
N&W 1218 is in show above blasting through Marion on Aug. 15, 1987, during happier times.
It was Kent State University’s Christmas vacation in December 1967, and Mike Ondecker and I had ridden Erie Lackawanna’s Lake Cities to Marion, Ohio. EL 823 and another E8A would power the Lake Cities west to Chicago while EL 833 would be left behind in Marion. The open nose door suggests that 833 had had a problem. How strange and wonderful the railfan world of 1967 looks through 2020 eyes.
Summerail 2019 has been set for Aug. 10 at the Palace Theater in Marion, Ohio.
It will be the fourth time that the annual railroad themed multimedia exhibition that began in 1995 in Cincinnati has been held in Marion.
Tickets are $25 and will be available at the door. A railroadiana show only ticket is available for $5.
The Palace Theater offers expansive theater-style seating and is within walking distance of Marion Union Station, one of Ohio’s top train-watching spots.
The depot and AC Tower will be open during the weekend of Summerail.
Ten presenters are in this year’s lineup including two from Northeast Ohio, Jerry Jordak and Ron Spiga.
The programs will begin at 1 p.m. and extend through 10 p.m. with a dinner break between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. A railroadiana show will be held in the theater building between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
The presenters and their program titles are:
Bryan Bechtold (The Kyle Railroad and the Great Plains), Bob Edmonson (Missouri Scrapbook), Jerry Jordak (25 Years of Railfanning the Keystone State), Frank Keller (North To Alaska, 2008-2018), Mike McBride (Riding the C&NW Carousel), Garland McKee (KCS Speedway), Vic Neves (Forty Years and Counting), Mike Schafer (Illinois Terminal), Ron Spiga (Assignment: Heidelberg, West Germany 1970), and Dave Stanley (Oregon’s Lumbering Ghosts)
On Friday, Aug. 9, four programs will be presented at Marion Union Station. There is no admission charge for those shows, which began about 7 p.m.
The presentations include Rick Acton, “Midwest and West from the 90s; Bill Kalkman, British Columbia & Alberta; Kirk Reynolds, The Best Ten Bucks I ever spent; and Steve Salamon, Monongahela Railway.
Under normal circumstances, I would be happy to see a Union Pacific locomotive leading a train eastbound on Norfolk Southern in Marion.
I was on this day, too, but . . . the auto racks it was toting would block my view a few seconds later of a westbound train being led by the Norfolk Southern heritage unit.
If its any consolation if I was going to be blocked, at least the image I did get was something other than a run of the mill NS wide cab.
Earlier this year I was in Marion when I noticed a loose bolt in one of the diamonds at the intersection of the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern with the Mt. Victory Subdivision of CSX.
The top photo shows the loose bolt. The second image shows an eastbound CSX auto rack train passing over the diamonds and making enough vibration to rattle the bolt out of its position.
Later that afternoon, an NS maintenance of way crews stopped by to put in a new bolt and do other repairs to the diamond (third image)
The bottom image shows the new bolt in place and the old bolt discarded along the tracks.
Auto rack trains aren’t the most attractive trains on the rails. Their tall and solid profile blocks your view of other tracks and trains, particularly if you are railfanning in Berea and a CSX auto rack train comes past on the the track closest to you.
As unit trains, they also tend to have a consistent appearance, although even that is not as uniform as, say, a tank car or coal train, because some auto rack cars might have slightly different sizes and colors.
As an example of the latter, look at the roofs of the cars above in an eastbound auto rack train rolling through Marion on the CSX Mt. Victory Subdivision.
Some roofs are white while others are a silver gray. Some cars feature yellow on their sides, but others are white.
Still, something about these auto racks caught my eye and captured my imagination.
I usually pay little attention to automobile, buses and trucks because they are not something in which I have a great interest.
But as I sat in Marion during a recent railfan outing a vehicle pulled in next to me that got my attention.
In part that was due to its color but also because I recognized it as being an older model Chevrolet.
I was mildly surprised to see that the occupants were two Millennial generation railfans. I usually don’t associate 1950s era cars with members of a generation born four decades later.
But interest in automobiles, like interest in trains, knows no generational boundaries.
If only late 1950s era locomotives were still running on mainlines such as the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern.
Can you imagine the railroad history that the grill of this Chevy has seen while waiting for trains at grade crossings over the years?
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 