Moving From Point B to Point A

I know what you’re thinking’ that’s bass ackwards. You go from Point A to Point B.

Well normally you do, but on March 1 the brother and I went from Bellevue to Ada.

How did we get there? Read along and you’ll find out.

I was barely in the door of my apartment on Saturday after work when my phone started ringing.

“Going to be a beautiful day tomorrow; Lisa (my brother’s wife) is off work and I’m itching to hit the road somewhere.”

“Where are we heading?”

“I don’t care, you pick someplace.”

“I’ll text you later with what I decide.”

“Roger, Willco.”

I went about my Saturday chores and then readied myself for church. As I sat in the pew waiting for mass to start “Bellevue” kept coming to mind. So after church I texted the brother “Be ready by 7:30, destination Bellevue.”

I got a text back. “I’ll be ready.”

Our 7:30 a.m. call time found us on the road headed west to Bellevue. As we got to Norwalk the scanner was turned on. Radio chatter from Bellevue began to filter in.

A good channel to listen to is the crew bus channel. They happen to use the same frequency as the Sandusky District, 161.190.

By the time we got to town, we knew that 218 and 234 were in the picture as crews were being picked up at the hotel/dorm for these trains.

Also at this time 12V was nearly ready to leave on its trek from Bellevue to Conway Yard near Pittsburgh. The 12V operates via Mansfield on the former Conrail Ft. Wayne Line.

As we entered Bellevue the 218 was re-crewed and ready to resume its trip.

We shot through town and headed south on Ohio Route 269 bound for one of our morning southbound (timetable eastbound) shots on the Sandusky District.

The 218’s counterpart, No. 217, was the first train we saw. It was approaching Flat Rock and would be stopping for a crew change shortly.

We headed to a county road crossing that features a nice white farmhouse and bright red barn as your photo props to shoot the 218. It wasn’t long before his headlight was on the horizon.

After shooting the intermodal train here, we headed south with it. Often NS trains get delayed at the former Baltimore & Ohio diamonds at Attica Junction. Today that would be the case.

“Take it easy down to Attica, CSX has two to run, before he can take you.” was the dispatcher’s message to 218’s crew.

As we approached the crossing where Ohio Route 4 crosses CSX, an eastbound double stack was going past.

It cleared and the gates went up just long enough for a couple of cars to get across before going back down for a westbound tank train.

This gave us a chance to get ahead of the 218 and shoot it again at the grain elevator in the actual town of Attica (top photograph). After 218 passed, we doubled back north for the other two trains.

The 12V was next and we set up for it at a spot that we like with two red barns to add to the photo (photo two below). The 12V was monster today with 205 cars, four units up front and a DPU 124 cars deep.

It was plodding along at about 25 mph on the normal westbound main. Before it could clear our location, the 234 went by on the other track blocked from our view by the 12V.

About now 234’s crew was talking to the PTC desk. Something wasn’t right and they’d have to stop briefly and reset something.

This gave us just enough of a break to get ahead of both trains. We again stopped at the Attica elevator and shot both trains there (photo three below).

The 12V would be our focus for the next few shots. The lumbering monster train was not only easy to chase because of its slow speed, it had the Conrail H-Unit running third in the consist (photo four below).

Plus when it got to Bucyrus (buck-eee-rus) it would make a left turn onto the former Conrail Ft. Wayne Line.

I wanted to shoot the elevator at North Robinson between Bucyrus and Crestline.

The brother was now driving. I had to change film after shooting 12V at Attica, so he chose a county road crossing north of the end of the double track at Chatfield for our next shot.

We let the whole train go by before resuming the chase. We tried for the north end of Benson siding via Carroll Road but didn’t make it in time.

Not to panic, the Ridgeton detector showed all the wheels hot on the 125th car. That would be the covered hopper right behind the DPU.

The crew on the 12V figured out a spot in Bucyrus where they could stop and not block crossings to inspect their problem car. It was now about 11:45 a.m. so we made a quick lunch stop at a Burger King on the east side of Bucyrus.

We didn’t dawdle which proved to be a good move. When we came out of the restaurant the Sandusky District dispatcher called the 12V for a progress report.

“Conductor’s about 10 cars back heading this way, we should be on the move shortly.”

“Permission to depart from where you stand.”

We arrived at North Robinson to find two younger railfans already set up for a shot. They were from the Dayton area. Before the 12V got to us two more cars of railfans showed up.

“A lot of fans for an H-unit running third out,” I thought.

Everyone except me lined up for a shot of the 12V splitting the position light signals (photo five below). I positioned myself so I could get the grain elevator with the train.

One of the late arrivals said that the 12V would be meeting the 171 at Crestline. The latter is a Conway to Chatanooga train.

And behind the 171 was a Wheeling and Lake Erie train heading to Lima with interchange cars for the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern.

“That’s why the crowd; they’re all here to chase the W&LE. Now it all makes sense,” I thought to myself.

After shooting the 12V, I walked west of the elevator to see if there was a shot there.

Not finding anything to my liking because of too much clutter and derelict truck trailers, I chose a spot that I could get a couple of the houses in town in my photo. Again the rest of the photo line was shooting those signals.

The 171 would be held for one train on the Sandusky District before it would be let around the corner to head south for Cincinnati.

We headed to the diamonds at Colsan in Bucyrus for the 171. We were the only ones there.

If indeed the Wheeling was behind the 171 we were going to chase it west on this former Pennsylvania Railroad trackage.

This is new territory for us. Trains out on this line on weekends are few and far between.

We waited at Colsan for the headlight of the Wheeling to appear before we barreled out of town.

I didn’t want to repeat an episode we had in Indiana a few years back where we chased air for a couple of hours.

The Wheeling indeed was on the move west and would get right across the diamonds at Colsan.

An elevator on the west side of Bucyrus was our first possible shot but we couldn’t find a good angle so it was on the road to Nevada (the city in Ohio, not the state).

Here we found a nice elevator shot in town at the Main Street crossing. The Wheeling train had three units up front, a black, yellow and another black.

They were making about 25 mph on jointed rail. Forgot how good that sounds.

After shooting it here we were off heading west. Using U.S. 30 to get around Upper Sandusky (both elevators there sit along the former C&O), we stopped at Kirby.

Here we found an elevator on the south side of the tracks and a garage that was painted to look like a red barn on the north side. We could frame the train between the two. We liked it and waited a few minutes for the train (photo six below).

Forest is the next town and never having been there we didn’t know what to expect.

Turns out Forest has two elevators along the tracks. We shot at the easterly one, a classic ceramic tile structure that was painted white at one time. The peeling paint on the elevator added some character to the scene.

It was then back on the road toward Dunkirk where the Ft. Wayne Line crosses the former New York Central (Toledo & Ohio Central Western Branch), now the CSX Toledo Branch Subdivision.

Dunkirk Tower still stands at the southwest corner of the diamond. It is shootable on the north/south line, because I have done it in the past while railfanning the Toledo Branch in Conrail days.

We rolled into town to find that the tower is shootable for a northbound/southbound and eastbound. You guessed it, no westbound shot. Off to Dola we went.

Dola is the next town to the west. The elevator in town is visible from Dunkirk.

I had hoped for a better photo op there but Dola disappointed. The elevator is only accessible on the east end, so it can only be shot eastbound. Oh Well, on to Ada.

Ada is a college town, the home of Northern Ohio University. I knew from some friends that went to NOU that the depot still stands and a caboose is displayed outside of it.

As we found in the last two towns the depot was not shootable for a westbound train when the sun is as far south as it is on March 1. It might be shootable from the north side of the tracks in the summer for a westbound.

We continued two blocks further west to the grain elevator in town. It is shootable westbound (photo seven below).

Actually, there is a large open area west of it with some siding tracks that could hold grain cars when the harvest season is in progress. They also have a critter to switch the facility.

We parked the car and waited about five minutes for the W&LE to arrive. I finally got a chance to count the cars that the Wheeling had today: 96 empty sand cars, an empty trash hopper and another covered hopper not like the sand cars.

This would be our last shot of the train and of the day. It was now after 3:30 p.m. and we were due home for dinner at 6 p.m.

Lisa was making chicken paprikash and you don’t want to miss that. Using Ohio Route 235 north out of town to access U.S. 30, which is now a four-lane divided highway all the way back to Interstate 71, we made good time.

The brother drove the U.S. 30 section of highway. A gas stop and crew change at Ashland put me back at the wheel for the last miles home. We pulled into Robert’s driveway at 5:58 p.m., two minutes to the good.

What a day! We did not expect to be in Ada but we were glad we that we were.

Article by Marty Surdyk, Photos by Robert Surdyk

Calm Water, Nice Reflection

The wind was calm and so was the water in the Attica reservoir during a visit there on the Memorial Day weekend.

That set up some nice conditions for a reflection image of an eastbound Norfolk Southern manifest freight on the Sandusky District.

This train would not go much farther. A malfunctioning switch at Colsan in Bucyrus had traffic stopped in both directions on the Sandusky District.

Loose Bolt in Marion

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.

Pleased to Visit With You Miss Caroline

For a short time the water was calm enough to get a decent reflection shot. Shown is NS westbound manifest train 180.

I’ve driven past the Attica resevoirs at Caroline along the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern many times, but I’d never stopped at the southernmost one.

I had seen photographs that Marty Surdyk has taken over the years at Caroline, but never made any images there myself until last June when we stopped there while chasing trains during the Akron Railroad Club’s longest day outing.

Nearly two months after that outing, I returned to Caroline with fellow ARRC member Peter Bowler.

Our goal was to get some reflection images of NS trains on the water of the reservoir. That was a challenge due to the windy conditions that whipped up the water and that direct sunlight was a hit and mostly miss proposition.

But we had not driven all this way to go home empty handed. We worked with what we had.

We had a situation in which NS had trains backed up waiting to cross the CSX diamonds at Attica Junction.

That junction is controlled by CSX and I can only imagine some of the telephone conversations that went on between CSX and NS officials as they tried to look out for the interests of their respective employers.

It was during the midst of the service issues that CSX was having last summer.

Not only were NS trains getting backed up at Attica Junction, but so were lesser priority CSX trains and/or those that Willard was not yet ready to handle.

In time, trains finally moved even if not as efficiently as everyone wanted.

 

The water wasn’t quite still enough to get a sharp reflection.

Once NS trains got the OK to go through Attica Junction they tended to run in pairs. Here the eastbound 195 passes the westbound 29G.

Detroit-bound stack train 29G cools its heels south of Caroline waiting for CSX to allow NS to run trains through Attica Junction.

At last NS stack train 29G has heard the word from the dispatch to come down to Attica Junction looking for a signal.

A westbound CSX manifest freight has the signal at Attica Junction. The view is looking northward to the east of the diamonds.

Massively Overshadowed

One in a series of posts of photographs that I made last summer.

The driver of this Norfolk Southern track car had authority on the Sandusky District as far as the mini plant in Bellevue.

That wasn’t the driver’s final destination. As I recall, the track car needed to get into the yard, but the dispatcher had traffic to run so the truck sat and sat and sat.

One of those trains was an outbound move with a pair of Union Pacific units in the motive power consist.

Those UP engines also overshadowed an NS high-nose GP38-2 that was trailing them.

I wondered what it would be like to be sitting behind the wheel of a track car and seeing this massive train coming at you.

It must have made for an interesting site provided, of course, that it was on another track and stayed on that track.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Something Out of the Ordinary

Norfolk Southern has nine D8.5-40CW locomotives on its roster. A website maintained by Chris Toth and devoted to NS motive power reports that eight of the units are currently stored, although still active.

They carry roster numbers 8500 to 8509. All of the units were rebuilt in 2015 and in the process received new cabs. And that is how No. 8508 came to took so distinctive.

It was sent out on the system with its new cab in primer paint. At first glance, the primary appears to be a light shade of blue.

I was hanging out in Bucyrus on Easter Eve earlier this year when NS train 194 rolled into town.

No. 8508 was the third unit. An online report said it was bound for Roanoke, Virginia.

My fellow Akron Railroad Club member Todd Dillon had spotted No. 8509 in Bellevue a few days earlier. He wrote that this rebuild program had not been successful and has been suspended.

Although the 8508 isn’t much to look at, I photographed it anyway because it is something out of the ordinary.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

 

Corn and 90MACs on the Sandusky District

I was sitting in Bellevue in early evening. Aside from some chatter on the radio, all was fairly quiet.

I heard a crew member tell the Sandusky District dispatcher that he was stopped short of County Road 32 and to let him know when it was OK to come down to Shriver. The dispatcher said he would.

I consulted my maps to found out where CR 32 was and headed that way. The train was easy to find.

It was a coal train led by one of the NS SD90MAC locomotives that the railroad purchased earlier this year from Union Pacific.

I’ve seen 90MACs trailing on several trains, but never leading. There was nice late day light bathing the 7238 and the corn in the fields adjacent to the tracks was not so high as to obscure the train.

It was not yet the fourth of July, but that corn was well over knee high.

The images are vintage Sandusky District in the region just south of Bellevue. There is just enough undulation to the terrain to make things interesting and farm fields to provide framing.

It is why the Sandusky is one of my favorite pieces of railroad to photograph.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Remembering a 2008 Sandusky District Outing

My favorite photograph made on a day on the NS Sandusky District in July 2008. The train appears to be coming out of the corn field.

If you saw Marty Surdyk’s program Friday night in which he reviewed his railroad photography work of 2014, you might have guesses that he has a fondness for traveling to north central Ohio to photograph trains.

In particular, he likes to patrol the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern between Bellevue and Bucyrus. Seeing his images taken there from the past summer brought back some memories or a 2008 journey I made with Marty and his brother Robert to the Sandusky District.

Until I joined the Akron Railroad Club in summer 2003 most of my railfanning had been confined to Berea.

I made periodic trips to Marion and got in some railfanning in Orrville during that town’s annual railroad days celebration. But more often than not I went to Berea on Saturday or Sunday and sat there all day.

Some of the guys I met would talk about places like Willard, Bellevue and Fostoria, but I had never seen them.

That began to change after I joined the ARRC and got to know Marty. He volunteered to take me out and show me places I had heard other railfans talk about.

Most of our travels involved going out on the CSX mainlines leading west of Cleveland and Akron as well as the NS Chicago Line.

Of all the places I visited with Marty the one that intrigued me the most was the NS Sandusky District.

I had seen Sandusky District trains in Marion, but never pursued them beyond there.

Unlike the other railroad routes we visited, the Sandusky District had a north-south orientation.

I was struck by how much of a rolling profile that this piece of railroad had. No, it wasn’t hills or rugged terrain. But it was enough up and down to make for some interesting photographs.

I also liked how the Sandusky District cut through farmlands that reminded me a lot of where I grew up in east central Illinois.

One Sunday visit to the Sandusky District that I made with Marty was particularly memorable.

It was July 13, 2008, on a sunny day with just enough white puffy clouds to make the sky interesting. We spent all afternoon and part of the evening chasing trains between Frank and Ridgeton.

I was a committed slide film shooter then, usually using Kodak Ektachrome 200 or Fuji Provia film. Sometimes I’d stick a roll of Fuji Velvia into my Canon Rebel G.

I had just begun having Dodd Camera copy my images onto a CD when they were processed which I thought gave me the best of both worlds of film and digital.

All images that you see with this article came from that CD and they are not of the same quality as digital images made with a digital camera. But they are adequate.

Marty was familiar with the Sandusky District having been on it many times. So he knew the best places to photograph.

Much of what we did and talked about that day has been lost in the fog of time.

We probably found a Subway, which is Marty’s go-to place for lunch. Much of our day likely was spent on the highways and rural roads looking for NS trains.

My favorite image of the day is the one that leads off this photo essay. It shows a southbound (railroad eastbound) train appearing to rise out of a corn field. In fact it is one of my all-time favorite Sandusky District images.

My second favorite images were made of the last train that we photographed on NS. Back then there was a late afternoon manifest freight out of Bellevue that usually had Canadian National motive power.

Today’s train was no exception. We intercepted it just south of Attica Junction and may have chased it a short distance.

By now we had late day light and those red and black CN locomotives looked great.

Although NS had been our primary objective, we went to Scipio to bag a pair of CSX trains, one in each direction, as the sun was setting.

I pushed the limits of what my camera could do to capture the second of those trains. The resulting image won’t win any photography awards, but reminds me of one of my most pleasant outings.

Marty, Robert and I made one more foray to the Sandusky District during which we focused on the territory between Bucyrus and Marion in an effort to photograph some of the surviving Pennsylvania Railroad position light signals.

I haven’t been back to the Sandusky District with Marty since then. I know Marty still has an affinity for the Sandusky District and gets there now and then.

I’ve since explored the territory on my own and with others, particularly in 2012 when the Nickel Plate Road 765 pulled a series of employee appreciation specials between Bellevue and Bucyrus.

I recently ran across that CD with the images that I made on that July 2008 day with Marty on the Sandusky District. Seeing them brought a smile to my face and a lot of warm memories to mind.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

There are plenty of farm fields lining the tracks of the Sandusky District. That helps keep the growth of trees in check.

The gentle roller coast profile of the Sandusky District helped endear me to this stretch of railroad.

Splitting the signals at, I think, a location south of Attica.

Coal dust is flying off this northbound coal train. Note the ex-Conrail unit trailing.

A day our with Marty isn’t complete unless you get a train next to a grain elevator. This one is at Ridgeton and the sunlight was vanishing fast.

The train with CN power at Attica Junction (Siam).

Those CN locomotives were looking sharp as they passed a recently harvested wheat field in late day light.

This was one of my earliest efforts to try glint photography with a sunset. I liked how it turned out. The view is of an eastbound CSX train at Scipio.

I pushed the limits of what my camera could do to get this westbound on CSX near Scipio.

Sunset on the former Baltimore & Ohio at Scipo.

 

 

An Afternoon on the NS Sandusky District

I set up to get the coal train at the County Road 32 grade crossing. Trains crest a crown here and come around a slight curve after passing through Flat Rock.

The Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern has long been one of my favorite pieces of railroad. It is not as busy as the Chicago Line and its distance from my home means that I don’t get out there as often as I’d like.

Yet I’ve long been attracted to this line because of its rolling terrain and its passage through the farm territory of north central Ohio, which reminds me a lot of where I grew up in east central Illinois.

Recently, I was able to get out to the Sandusky District for the first time since 2012. I’ve railfanned the route in Bellevue a few times, but that’s not the same as getting out and chasing trains on the line.

My objective for this day was to show some of the key features of this territory.

The line has a north-south orientation even if NS refers to trains as eastward or westward. Consequently, I tend to favor photographing southbounds, which are railroad east.

My usual strategy is to sit in Bellevue along Slaughterhouse Road and wait for a train to come out and go down the Sandusky District or for one to come off the Fostoria District and take the connection to head for Columbus.

In fact, the first train that I saw, an empty coal hopper train, came off the Fostoria District. But I knew another train would follow because although the coal train had a clear signal, the other signal for southbounds that can be seen south of Slaughterhouse Road displayed an approach indication.

As it turned out, the Sandusky District had a resemblance to the Chicago Line with northbounds parked in various places between Flat Rock and Attica Junction. I don’t know why that was the case.

The Sandusky District still resembled a parking lot when I left later in the day as the sun was setting. Indeed, the only moving northbound trains on the Sandusky District that I saw came into Bellevue shortly after I got there around noon.

So here is a selection of what I captured during my afternoon out with the Sandusky District. I came away pleased with it.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

I had a photo that was more of a close-up view of the locomotive nose, but I opted for this one because of the sliver of farmland visible to the right.

I caught up with the coal train south of Caroline, but I didn’t have time to get to the crossing in time to get out and set up. Instead, I got this grab shot out the window of my car. I would have liked to have been a little closer to the tracks, but the wider angle does well in showing the farm territory through which the Sandusky District passes.

My last shot of the coal train was of it rounding the curve in Chatfield.

After breaking off the chase of the coal train, I heard the dispatcher tell a track car headed north that he would meet two eastbounds at West Attica. Then I heard the first of them call the signal at West Attica and then at Attica Junction. I barely was able to get into Attica and set up by the cemetery and fairgrounds to get this auto rack train.

The in-your-face shot of the auto rack train in Attica.

It’s the train of the day! I was driving north on Ohio Route 4 and saw this train sitting at West Attica. I turned around and returned to Attica where I caught it while standing on the edge of the cemetery so I could get some height. It was idea that I was able to work in the field to the right because, well, it’s a grain train.

Ordinarily, I am not big on roster shots, but its a Santa Fe warbonnet and the lighting was good and here goes. I rather liked the results.

I had seen this train leave Bellevue and on a whim I decided to chase it on the chance there would be just enough daylight left. It had a head start on me and it wasn’t enough to just get ahead of it. I had to get enough ahead of it to get to a grade crossing. That turned out to be County Road 46 near Frank where the train was stopping as I arrived.

A different angle of the same train. From this perspective, you can see the consist, of this relatively short train. Another southbound manifest was parked just south of CR 46. A northbound had this approach signal but was parked. The Sandusky District here was looking like the Chicago Line had this summer and early fall.

The last train that I photographed on the Sandusky District was a northbound manifest freight sitting just short of County Road 46. This train had an approach signal indication as seen in the previous sequence. But I don’t know why it wasn’t moving. But that worked to my advantage in creating this sunset images.

One more view of the parked northbound as the sun sinks in the western sky to end a productive day of chasing trains on the Sandusky District.