Here is a trio of images made on from June 27, 2022, on the Fort Wayne Line of Norfolk Southern. No. 5321 is eastbound in Orrville with train C03. No. 6345 is eastbound in North Lawrence with train C67. NS 6308 is on the west end of NS 6345’s eastbound train. These trains are all locals.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
I was sitting in Waterloo, Indiana, next to the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern when I heard talk on the radio about a train 880.
The 880 is a loaded Powder River coal train handed over to NS in Chicago by BNSF at Cicero Yard and it usually has BNSF motive power.
It is destined for a Detroit Edison power plant in the Monroe/Trenton, Michigan, area.
Although it was late morning, the lighting remained favorable for an eastbound. I planned to get the lead unit of the 880 passing a former freight station.
As soon as I heard the defect detector go off near milepost 370 I started getting into position because the train was less than three miles away.
I was standing in a city parking lot next to the former New York Central passenger station, which also serves as an Amtrak waiting room although the boarding platform is a block west.
The tracks here are slightly elevated from the level of the parking lot.
I heard a locomotive horn and figured that to be the 880 blowing for a crossing on the west side of town.
Just as the orange nose of the lead BNSF unit came into sight on Track 2, out of nowhere came a westbound manifest freight on Track 1, which blocked the shot I planned to get of the 880. I was able to get a glimpse of the 800 but that was it.
To be honest, what I said was stronger than the favorite saying of cartoon character Oil Can Harry of Mighty Mouse fame whenever something didn’t go his way.
It turned out the horn I heard was that of the westbound for a crossing about a block to the east. I had heard another train making scratchy calls on the radio, but it didn’t seem that close. Alas, it was closer than I thought.
What else can I say? Things like this happen when you’re trackside.
Passing the 213 milepost in Amherst as train 287 takes the siding.
About to duck beneath the Jackson Street bridge.
A parting shot as the auto rack cars catch a little glint from the filtered late day sunlight.
Traffic on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern has all but dried up.
A lull of more than an hour was broken by a radio transmission from the Toledo East dispatcher to westbound auto rack train No. 287.
The dispatcher informed the crew it would be going into the siding whose eastern end begins in Amherst beneath the Ohio Route 58 bridge.
They also received yarding instructions for Fairlane.
That prompted me to begin walking briskly from the restored former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern depot in Amherst to the bridge carrying Jackson Street over the NS tracks.
I had been shooting the breeze with the guys at the joint picnic hosted by the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts to which Akron Railroad Club members had been invited.
The RRE annually has its picnic in Amherst and every year I’ve attended I’ve spent time photographing on the Jackson Street bridge.
The headlight of the lead unit of the 287 was already in sight as I reached the bridge.
Slowly the train made its way into the siding, making it the first train I’ve shot in this siding.
For awhile I wasn’t sure if I would keep my Amherst bridge tradition going. So I felt better as I walked back to the depot knowing the streak had been kept alive.
For some time I’ve been wanting to make a photograph of a Norfolk Southern train passing the Willoughby Coal & Supply building on the north edge of downtown Willoughby.
I’ve seen a number of images made here and it seems like nearly every railroad photographer in Northeast Ohio has photographed the scene except me.
The building is a red brick structure that is said to be haunted. On the day that I made the image shown above a school group from the Orange schools was making a field trip here for a ghost walk.
The building is listed among the top 10 in the book America’s Most Haunted and described listed in Haunted Willoughby, Ohio by Cathi Weber.
The structure was built in 1893 as a flour mill and the haunted tale stems from the 1947 mysterious death of its owner.
The building has housed a number of businesses over the years with the current owner selling to the sewer and masonry industry since 1955.
Photographing here is pretty straight forward. The scene works best with an eastbound train in the morning and you stand on the south side of the tracks on the sidewalk for Erie Street.
Shown is NS train 316, a Bellevue to Buffalo manifest freight that on this particular day was led by a Canadian Pacific unit.
In this second installment of the trip that Akron Railroad Club member Ed Ribinskas took to Pennsylvania last month, we join him at Horseshoe Curve on the Pittsburgh Line of Norfolk Southern.
Ed was there along with his brother in law Karl and his son Owen. They made a day trip to the curve and the Everett Railroad.
While on the curve, Ed photographed Amtrak westbound train No. 43, the Pennsylvanian. It had its standard Amfleet consist pulled by a single P42DC locomotive.
No. 43 passed on the curve an NS manifest freight had had the Savannah & Atlanta heritage unit (No. 1065) in the motive power consist.
This Norfolk Southern train on the Toledo District is stopped short of a grade crossing north of Kingsway where the double track becomes single track.
Back in July, fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler and I headed west along the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.
Our journey took us to Oak Harbor and we ended up pursing three eastbounds on the Toledo District.
We noticed that all three of those trains stopped and waited a while just north of Kingsway where double track goes to single track.
I don’t know if this is standard operating procedure or was just an aberration on this particular day.
I’m not sure if I had the correct radio frequency for this line so I never heard any chatter between the trains and the dispatcher.
My first guess was that the trains were stopped because of congestion in Bellevue, which isn’t that far away. It wasn’t for opposing traffic. Someone else suggested later that it could have been because the Fremont local was working and had the mainline tied up.
The first of the three trains we had initially spotted in Graytown. We didn’t realize it was taking the connection at Oak Harbor to the Toledo District until we heard it call the signal for the connection.
We gave chase and thought we had lost the train, which had a pair of Union Pacific units pulling it.
About to give up, I spotted the rear of the train, which appeared to be slowing. It came to a halt just north Kingsway and short of a rural road crossing.
We waited around a while, thinking an opposing train was coming. But that didn’t happen and back to Oak Harbor we went although that for very long.
A grain train on the Chicago Line called a signal that indicated it, too, was diverging onto the connection to the Toledo connection.
We moved over to Union Cemetery in Oak Harbor and got this train crossing the Portage River.
Then it was on the road to see if we could catch it. Like the train we had seen earlier, the grain train stopped short of Kingsway.
We made some more photographs once again headed back to Oak Harbor. To my surprise, I spotted a third eastbound on the Toledo District.
We turned around and intercepted it at a crossing where the gates were going down as we arrived.
The crossing was at the west end of Sewell and the train was headed into the Kingsway siding.
For the third time, we motored to that crossing north of Kingsway where the grain train was still sitting.
After making some photos of the trains sitting side by side, it was back to Oak Harbor as time was getting short and we still wanted to photograph the lighthouse at Marblehead and then get the sunset from Catawba Island State Park.
Somewhere in there we also needed to get something for dinner.
Crossing the Portage River at Oak Harbor.
A barn or shed pays tribute to America.
There are lot of grain hoppers behind that motive power.
The home on the west side of the tracks had an expansive and well-maintained lawn.
That home on the other side of the tracks did not appear to be occupied.
The third eastbound that we saw on the Toledo District.
One advantage of being on the wrong side of the light was being able to make this image of the train passing a nearby field.
Almost into the siding at Sewell.
A long string of boxcars on the rear.
The manifest freight we had seen earlier pulls up alongside the still waiting grain train.
Waiting side by side.
A parting shot of the grain train.
I was hanging out in North East, Pa., on Bort Road late Sunday morning when Norfolk Southern train 309 came cruising past. There was little danger of this train not having enough power to make the grades as the consist of three covered hopper cars each had a locomotive to pull it.
In the top photograph, the train has passed beneath Interstate 90 and is leaning into an S curve.
In the middle photo, the train to the right is a CSX tanker train that was led by a BNSF Grinstein and a Union Pacific trailing unit. NS 209 has entered the straight stretch of another S curve.
I threw this image in for fun. The compression of the lens makes it appear as though the NS 209 has but one car.
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