Seeing your blog post on Trail-Fail reminded me I’ve had a few over the last week or two.
The first is from Berea involving Norfolk Southern No. 4001 one of the “blues brothers,” a GE Dash 9 rebuilt with AC traction motors.
This was not only a trail=fail but it was almost blocked by another train. An empty flatcar saved the day.
Second is the same engine a week later at Rootstown. It had been leading but PTC issues forced the crew to wye the power at Rockport Yard, making this a trail=fail as well.
Third is also at Rootstown about an hour later with DC to AC unit not trailing but in low light as the sun was rapidly going down.
Finally, there was the instance of the Reading heritage unit trailing at Hudson.
I’ve had good luck of late catching and photographing Norfolk Southern’s Virginian heritage locomotive, including twice this week.
In both instancing No. 1069 was leading a stack train.
In the top image, the Virginian H unit is leading eastbound 22K at 10:23 a.m. in Painesville at Madison Avenue/Park Road.
Four days later it came back west on the point of the 23K, which I caught at 12:22 p.m. at Bank Street, which is the west end of the bridge over the Grand River.
I had seen a few days earlier on Heritage Units.com that Southern Railway heritage unit No. 8099 was trailing on Norfolk Southern train 206.
Then on the night of Aug 9 I saw on HU that No. 8099 as reported leading NS train 205 at 7:55 p.m.
The next morning when I woke up I checked if anything was reported on the 8099. I was assuming it had already passed through Northeast Ohio. But nothing had been posted.
At 8:24 a.m. I checked again and saw a post of a sighting at 8:22 a.m. at Kingsville, Ohio.
I opted to photograph it at Riverside Drive in Painesville, using as a photo prop the huge steel deck pieces for the new Vrooman Road high-level bridge being constructed a few miles to the east.
This bridge is being constructed by the same builders who had constructed the NS bridge over the Grand River behind me.
Let the record show that Southern 8099 showed up at 9:05 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 10.
I saw on Sunday morning that Norfolk Southern train 287 would have the Central of Georgia No. 8101 leading.
Before I went to church in the morning I saw that it was in the Buffalo, New York, area so I was able to attend mass then come home for an update.
After I got home the next post was North East, Pennsylvania, at 9:56 a.m. I figured under normal circumstances it would show around 11:30 a.m. It obviously was held in Conneaut until 206 and 22K passed it.
Because of the delay, the lighting was perfect at 1:50 p.m. at the west end of the Painesville trestle over the Grand River.
I watched Penn Central No. 1073 this morning at 9:15 a.m. on the Horseshoe Curve rail cam. Also around that time I saw NS 8114 had been posted on Heritage Units as being in Chesterton, Indiana. What would be the chances for seeing two in one day?
I called fellow Akron Railroad Club member Jeff Troutman and he was attending a funeral but said he should be back home in the afternoon.
They were closing in so I figured if I drove we would have to be on the road by 3:30 p.m. I called Jeff and he was to be home a little after 3 p.m. I got him at 3:30 p.m.
We got to the Tot Lot in Bedford at about 4:50 p.m. The first two photos were made about a minute later.
A young railfan from Wisconsin with his father had no idea this was coming and was super excited. Then his excitement returned about 50 minutes later. It was a good day for everybody.
I had a trunk load of railfan magazines to convey to Marty Surdyk to be sold at trains shows at which the Akron Railroad Club has a table.
We arranged to exchange the magazines one evening last summer in Olmsted Falls, which is a favorite railfanning haunt for both of us.
After transferring the magazines, we settled in to do some evening railfanning. I had brought my tripod to try some night photography.
But before you get to darkness you get to that time when the low sun angle makes for some nice glint lighting.
Of course you need a train to show up when the light is just right to go glint hunting.
On this evening NS cooperated by sending eastbound manifest freight 16G at just the right time. As a bonus, the Norfolk Southern heritage locomotive was on the lead.
Strictly speaking, the going away shot of the NS 8114 below is not a glint shot. But I liked it and included it in the gallery because it is part of the story.
The Erie heritage locomotive was one of the last of the series of Norfolk Southern heritage locomotives that I saw and photographed. It eluded me for nearly two years before I finally caught it in late December 2014.
It was the last of the 20 H units that I physically saw, but was the penultimate one that I photographed.
I don’t see the Erie that often, but I have managed to catch it a five times since that late 2014 sighting.
I got a text from fellow Akron Railroad Club member Todd Dillon that NS 1068 was leading Norfolk Southern train 22K.
I was expecting the 22K to come through Olmsted Falls in late morning but it was just after 2 p.m. before it finally arrived. Here is sighting No. 7 of the Erie heritage unit.
Although last Saturday started off cloudy, by afternoon the skies had cleared and the sun came out.
I heard that Norfolk Southern train 12V had the Southern heritage unit leading. I went to Canton to catch it. I caught it twice, once at Wandle and again at Fairhope, where it was switching the yard.
Unfortunately, I had to shoot directly into the sun so the results weren’t very good. I ran into fellow railfan Matt Arnold and he told me of a Wheeling & Lake Erie train returning on the branch from Fairhope.
We didn’t have long to wait and this train, the 271, with a blue engine leading was perfectly lit.
I then ran by Gambrinus Yard and got a former Denver & Rio Grande Western GP40 out front. If you didn’t know better this looked like a Rio Grande yard instead of the Wheeling & Lake Erie.
By this time the 12V was finished switching and I got it a third time at Maximo just west of Alliance. The track turns north here and I had excellent side light. This ended my day.
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 