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.
The Virginian heritage locomotive of Norfolk Southern made a pass through Northeast Ohio on Tuesday on the point of intermodal train 22K.
Ed Ribinskas caught No. 1069, an SD70ACe, on the bridge over the Grand River in Painesville just after 11 a.m.
The train is bound for Ayer, Massachusetts, and originated in Chicago. It is a pretty reliable daytime sighting in Northeast Ohio.
For nearly two hours the CSX New Castle Subdivision through Kent had been quiet. That is not necessarily a rare occurrence as that line can have some long dry spells.
From what I could tell it didn’t help that train Q299 had suffered a locomotive failure, which had Track No. 1 tied up.
Finally, I heard the Q137 call the signal at Davey Tree northeast of town. I got into position on an observation platform that is part of the now decorative dam on the Cuyahoga River just south of the Main Street bridge.
I couldn’t see the train until it emerged from beneath the bridge. Imagine my surprise to see a Norfolk Southern unit leading the train.
Now that’s something you don’t see every day on the New Castle Sub.
At first glance, the trailing unit, though, didn’t look anything like NS or CSX.
What is this? As the train continued its westward trek on Track 2, I recognized that it was the Virginian heritage locomotive of NS.
A check of the unit’s spotting history on HeritageUnits.com found that No. 1069 has been on CSX since at least Oct. 17 when BNSF handed it off in Chicago.
No. 1069 led Q138 eastbound through Akron on Oct. 18 at 7:30 a.m. and when I saw it last Friday it was returning westward.
As of this morning, NS 1069 was still on CSX, having been spotted on two trains in Michigan over the weekend.
Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian arrives in downtown Altoona.
I didn’t do any chasing of Nickel Plate Road No. 765 this past weekend since I already had planned a trip to Altoona, Pennsylvania, with my friend Larry Luther.
On Friday, we did Horseshoe Curve and on Saturday we were in downtown Altoona for some Norfolk Southern and Amtrak action.
Later that day we rode the Everett Railroad to Brooke Mills then did a chase of its long excursion of the year to Martinsburg with the locomotive facing forward in both directions. I’ll be posting my images from that outing in multiple segments. Today will focus on the curve and Altoona.
Photographs by Edward Ribinskas
Here comes the Virginian heritage locomotive of Norfolk Southern leading train 20Q around Horseshoe Curve just before 5 p.m. on Sept. 15.
Getting up close and personal with NS 1069.
Cameras are out as the Virginian H unit rounds the curve.
On the other leg of the horseshoe as seen from the park.
Some Norfolk Southern action in Altoona.
Amtrak arrives into the Altoona station.
On Thursday afternoon Norfolk Southern sent two interesting trains westbound. The first was 60H a unit train of gypsum that had the Virginian heritage unit leading.
The second had two brand new DC to AC conversion units leading 65K, an empty crude oil train. Both of these have a black mane but different color separation stripes one one blue and one maroon.
I got both of these trains at Rootstown.
The engineer of the 765 waves at the crew of the 145. The two locomotives then exchanged whistle greetings.
Nose to nose in the image that I really wanted to make.
The nose of NS 1069 reflects on the tender of the NKP 765
In the back of my mind I knew it was possible, although it seemed unlikely. The Virginian heritage locomotive of Norfolk Southern was leading the 145 westward on the former Nickel Plate Road route between Cleveland and Buffalo, New York.
NKP 765 would use that line between Cleveland and Ashtabula, Ohio, on Thursday as part of its ferry move to Youngstown for a pair of weekend excursions.
But with the 26R, 22K, 206 and 310 immediately preceeding the 765 ferry move eastbound — which carried symbol 958 — the 145 was marooned in Conneaut, Ohio.
For that matter, the 23K was stuck in the siding in Unionville waiting for all five trains to pass.
After shooting the 765 crossing the Grand River on the trestle in Painesville, fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler and I gave chase, but were unable to catch the 958 until right before Ashtabula.
We heard on the radio that the 958 would re-crew at Woodman Road and that it was going into the siding.
As we drove down Woodman, the 145 was talking to the Youngstown Line dispatcher. Maybe there was a chance. As it turned out, the 958 would wait for the 145 to pass before proceeding toward the connection to the Youngstown Line.
The 145 went into emergency about half-mile to the east, a separated air hose the culprit. After everything was repaired, it was on its way. It was the photo opportunity of the day.
The Virginian heritage unit of Norfolk Southern has made a few appearances in Northeast Ohio in the past week. This past Sunday it led an auto rack train bound for Detroit through the Cleveland area during the mid morning hours.
Earlier, it had led the I8V, an extra section of the 28V, out of Rockport Yard in Cleveland to Conway Yard near Pittsburgh.
But before all of that happened, the NS saw spot duty on the BX01 in Cleveland. A gritty old school steel mill looms in the distance as BX01 does it’s air test in the cool shade of a few trees.
Campbell Road yard in the distance was originally a Wheeling and Lake Erie yard. Did any original Virginian units make it to this Campbell Road back in the day?
A sight that no one wants to see at Berea. A CSX stack train is coming ahead of an NS train that has a heritage unit in the consist.
Shortly after the Berea train show opened on Saturday, Todd Dillon took out his smartphone to check if any Norfolk Southern heritage units might be coming our way today.
The most promising prospect was No. 1069, the Virginian heritage locomotive, which was trailing on an eastbound train that had passed Wauseon, Ohio, west of Toledo at 8:47 a.m., according to Heritageunits.com.
Depending on a number of factors, Todd reckoned No. 1069 would reach Berea by late afternoon.
“Good,” I thought. I could work at the show until afternoon and then go bag another heritage unit. I had seen and photographed the Virginian H unit before.
But that had been a terrible photo that I got of it sitting in the engine service facility at Conway Yard near Pittsburgh this past June.
I wanted to do better than that. Not that I’d get a great shot of it passing through Berea on a crummy day, but it would be better than what I had.
I went about the business of watching the ARRC table at the train show and chatting with whoever came past.
It was nearly noon when Todd checked the status of No. 1069 and said it had been reported past Sandusky a half-hour ago. He suggested that if I wanted to get it in Berea I’d better go over there now.
I wanted to go to Olmsted Falls, but settled for Berea because I didn’t know how close the train was, didn’t even know its symbol and didn’t want to miss it.
Perhaps there would be railfans at Berea who would know the status of No. 1069. There were railfans all right, but none of them knew anymore about the 1069 then I did.
A Wheeling & Lake Erie train was taking the connection from CSX to NS as I arrived.
After a few minutes, light rain began falling. I sat in my car for a while and then stood under a tree next to the parking lot where a couple other guys were, including a fellow from DeKalb, Ill., a college town located along the Union Pacific’s transcontinental line.
I made cell phone contact with Roger Durfee and all he knew was what was posted on HU.com, which was that the Virginian had been spotted at Amherst about 20 minutes earlier. No one seemed to know the train symbol.
I heard a faint radio transmission on my scanner on the frequency used west of Berea. Perhaps that was it.
A few minutes later I saw a headlight through the trees going in the curve on CSX. I just knew what was going to happen next.
A double-stack container train rounded the curve on CSX and then a train popped out from around the curve on NS.
The guy from Illinois said he saw a glimpse of yellow in the motive power lashup of the NS train.
Maybe the NS train would get to our position just slightly ahead of the CSX train. Fat chance of that.
In fact, it wasn’t even a contest. Although the CSX train was flying and it was too long to be past before the NS train reached BE tower.
I spotted a string of empty well cars and I thought that I might be able to get a shot over it. It almost worked. Those bare tables are taller than you might think and the 1069 was a little too far east.
As Oil Can Harry used to say in the Mighty Mouse cartoons, “Curses! Foiled again!”
Except that I used stronger language than that.
I was not going to be defeated. I got in my car and headed for Bedford. The NS train, manifest freight 34N, would have to go downtown and come back. I could cut straight across town on I-480.
It was raining steadily as I barreled along toward Bedford. Should I try for the tot lot or go to the Bedford Reservation Metropark?
I elected to go to the Metropark, figuring I would have it to myself. Wrong!
Bedford was having a pumpkin festival and there was a stream of pedestrians walking along the road into the park, many of whom thought there was on a hiking trail not a public street.
There were a few empty spaces in the lot and I found one. The scanner was strangely quiet.
Where is that train? Could it have gotten past me? No, that was unlikely.
After what seemed much longer than the 20 plus minutes that I waited, I heard the 34N call a clear signal on Track No. 1 at CP 110.
There was no danger of getting blocked a second time by a passing train.
It took a couple minutes for the 34N to show up. I finally had an unobstructed close up view of NS No. 1069.
The resulting photos are roster shot material. They are OK, but not great. But I wasn’t expecting greatness given the conditions.
I didn’t feel the same sense of accomplishment I had felt earlier in the week when I caught the Reading heritage locomotive at Olmsted Falls on an eastbound oil tanker train in the DPU position facing west in nice late day lighting.
Still, I got my locomotive and had “won” the battle, if that is the right word to use.
I get few opportunities to photograph NS heritage units and I was going to let this one pass by.
The best I could do trying to shoot over an empty well car.
At last an unobstructed view of my target.
Not too bad, I suppose, for a roster shot of a heritage unit in the trailing position.
I caught wind of Norfolk Southern No. 8099, the Southern Railway Heritage unit, leading an empty grain train west out of Conway this past Monday.
The 8099 isn’t the most common H unit through my neck of the woods. The weather was less than ideal, so I went for a little “then and now” photo at Hudson.
I had shot the Virginian heritage unit there back in May and had used the old Pennsylvania Railroad station bay window as a prop.
Fast forward a few months and there is a chill in the air. It’s fall and even though I stood in the same spot as the May photo the station is gone, having been razed about a month ago.
After the zoom shot I took a wider view that shows that a few broken bricks and the radio antenna are all that remain of the structure.
It was a well attended event. Here is a shot of part of the crowd. Note the 1069 off in the distance.
Having never visited this wonderful place, I used the “Railroad Days” event this past weekend as an “excuse” to make the trip from Northeast Ohio to Southwest Virginia.
Knowing the Virginian heritage unit would be there was icing on the cake. I approached my photo taking knowing this was going to be an event with a lot of people around, many of them not “railfans” as we know the term.
Aside from the tunnel, the 1069 was definitely the star of the show and thanks go out to my employer for having a heritage unit there.
It introduced many non fans to some railroad history. I heard many remarks about how nice it was that NS did what they did for this event. Needless to say I burned a lot of pixels, so here are a few to look at.
Here are color and (below) black and white versions at the other portal of the 1069. It turned out that I knew one of the railroad employees who let me be the “last man out,” which allowed for these people less photo.
The view from above the tunnel portal.
Sitting on the bridge over the river.
The 1069 sitting in front of the man made tunnel.
Overview of the tunnel and the mountain. I tried to convey a sense of how grand this place is.
A man, his dog and the Virginian.
Sitting in the tunnel and then starting up.
The next three views are from inside the tunnel. It was pretty neat to be able to walk through it.
Chair lift ride down to the tunnel.
Everyone wants their picture taken with a star.
The crowd views the locomotive at the opposite portal of the tunnel.
NS 9256 backing down past the crowd.
NS 9256 inside the tunnel.
The star of the show never failed to impress the crowd.
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