An Enjoyable Outing to Start 2022

This past Sunday Marty Surdyk and I drove to Erie to see an Erie Otters minor league hockey game.

After Marty picked me up at my house in Painesville, we stayed close to both railroads on either Route 84 or Route 20 Between Madison and Geneva.

We heard on the scanner that Norfolk Southern intermodal train 22K was near and we set up at Brown Road midway between Geneva and Saybrook.

The top two images above are what I captured of the 22K at this location.

Heading east we wanted to check out a rumor that Marty heard recently that the Norfolk Southern (ex-Nickel Plate) trestle at Conneaut would be replaced just as the trestle in Painesville was a few years ago. 

We also heard on the radio that 22K would take the siding at Woodworth Road east of the Conneaut Creek trestle to allow approaching 206 to pass it.

What we found was that a construction road has been cut through the trees off Main Street at creek level before the road started uphill out of the valley.

Then on Woodworth Road on the east end we spotted construction equipment and markers on the south side of the trestle for the new bridge. Over the next year I’m sure we will return to view and photograph the progress.

We then headed east and set up at Lucas Road near East Springfield, Pennsylvania, to await NS 206. Lucas Road is the last of back-to-back road crossings. The third photo above was made at that location.

Our last photo op would be the next crossing at Townline Road west of Girard, Pennsylvania. Photo 4 shows the 22K after it came out of the siding several miles back.

It was a gloomy day but we did enjoy an exciting hockey game in which the Otters defeated the Kitchener (Ontario) Rangers 6-2.

The arena is adjacent to the ballpark for the Class AA Erie SeaWolves. Actually the arena is the left field wall for the ballpark.

I always had a nickname for that when we’ve attended baseball games there. Fenway Park has the famous Green Monster. Erie has the Arena Monster.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

NS Expanding LCL Service

Earlier this year Norfolk Southern launched an experimental less than carload service that involved moving freight in boxcars attached to intermodal trains.

The first trains to provide that service operated in the Chicago-Atlanta-Florida service lane.

It appears, though, that the LCL service has been extended to intermodal trains operating between Chicago and the Middle Atlantic region.

Shown is a boxcar in the consist of the 21M at Waterloo, Indiana, bound for Chicago (63rd Street) from Croxton, New Jersey, on the NS Chicago Line.

NS Expands Capacity of Chicago Terminal

In the wake of record intermodal volume, Norfolk Southern has expanded capacity at its Landers international intermodal terminal in Chicago.

In a customer service advisory issued this week, NS said it has increased stacked container capacity by 60 percent by reconfiguring terminal operations.

NS said it added three reach-stackers, and has three more on the way, to increase lift capacity by 40 percent per hour, which will reduce dray driver dwell for container pickups.

The terminal has been reconfigured so that it is now subdivided into 10 stacks to reduce handling and dwell times.

Landers handles containers for 11 inbound and outbound trains.

Some D&RGW Came to Me

I had planned a visit to Colorado last summer that would have been to Denver & Rio Grande Western territory. That got scrubbed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I still felt uneasy this year about making that trip.

Then on Tuesday the D&RGW heritage unit of Union Pacific passed through Painesville on the point of Norfolk Southern train 206.

Here is my catch passing over the Grand River at 11:45 a.m.

The same locomotive came back west Friday morning on the point of NS 205. A week earlier, the UP’s Missouri Pacific heritage unit led NS trains 22K and 23K through Northeast Ohio.

Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

NS to Try Expedited L-T-C Service

Norfolk Southern plans to offer an expedited less-than-carload service between Chicago and Miami via Atlanta.

The door-to-door service involves having trucks pick up small loads and deliver them to a rail-served warehouse for loading aboard boxcars that will be moved via intermodal trains. Trucks will also make the “last mile” delivery to the shipment’s destination.

Ed Elkins, NS vice president of industrial products, said the service is boxcars with pallets of freight moving inside.

The service, to be known as Thoroughbred Freight Transfer service, is experimental and involves  Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami. Elkins said it will test whether NS can convert highway traffic to rail.

NS plans to forward the boxcars on trains 215/216 between Chicago and Atlanta, and trains 209/214 between Atlanta and Jacksonville.

In Jacksonville the cars are interchanged with Florida East Coast, which takes them to Miami.

“It’s really an old product … a long time ago railroads did all kinds of this business. Millions of carloads of this business,” Elkins said. “The key is can we find a niche that delivers value to customers that they’re willing to pay for, that solves their problems. And in the current environment, where there’s not a great deal of excess capacity on the highway, this is an experiment that’s very interesting to us.”

Pole Line Remnants

There was a time when major railroad lines had poles carrying code lines used in communications systems. Newer forms of technology did in pole lines and many railroads have removed the poles and wires.

The latter in particular were often targeted by thieves seeking to steal the copper wire to sell at a salvage yard.

When pole lines were common, some railroad photographers disliked them, seeing them as clutter. But I’ve come to view pole lines or what is left of them in a different way.

Where they exist they add a sense of railroad history to a scene.

The photographs above were made on May 29 on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern just west of Brimfield, Indiana.

I had heard the eastbound 20E calling signals over the radio and looked for a grade crossing at which to catch it. When I saw the remnants of a pole line here I knew this was the place.

It also was nice to have some adjacent farm fields in which the corn is coming up for another harvest season.

Sunday Spent Watching Trains, Baseball

I had a great outing with Marty Surdyk on Sunday. We left Painesville shortly after 9 a.m. and railfanned our way to Erie.

Our first photo was of an eastbound CSX stack train at County Line Road in Unionville.  Shortly after that a westbound CSX train came past at the same location.

Photograph 3 shows what in the past would have been two trains now run as one. In this case it is double-stacked containers and auto racks.

We then motored on to Geneva where we caught an eastbound intermodal at Geneva.

We made our way to Lake City, Pennsylvania, where we caught a manifest freight passing the former New York Central passenger station there.

At nearby Girard, Pennsylvania, we caught a eastbound Norfolk Southern intermodal train, either the 22K or 206 about a half-mile  west of Wallace Junction.

You can see the relocated former Nickel Plate Plate station perpendicular to the tracks.

Afterwards we worked our way toward Erie and UPMC Park where we watched the Erie Seawolves beat the Akron Rubber Ducks 7-6 in an action-packed game that lasted 3 hours, 29 minutes.

We had no luck finding a train on the former Bessemer & Lake Erie in Northeast Ohio. Will be back there on another day to try again.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

More Than a Stack Train

Norfolk Southern train 200 originates in Danville, Kentucky, and is goes to the Global 2 facility on the Union Pacific in Chicago.

At first glance it might appear to be a stack train. But in an era of precision scheduled railroading you might find intermodal trains carrying a variety of freight. Behind the containers was a long string of mixed freight.

The westbound train is shown running parallel to Indiana Avenue in New Castle, Indiana, on the New Castle District.

NS Intermodal Train Derails in Pennsylvania

No injuries were reported after 15 cars of an eastbound Norfolk Southern intermodal train derailed on Monday night near Newport, Pennsylvania.

The derailment blocked both tracks and led to Amtrak cancelling its New York-Pittsburgh Pennsylvanian in both directions on Tuesday.

News reports said the derailment occurred about 6:30 p.m. on the west side of the Juniata River near Old Ferry Road.

The train was reported in an online report to be the IOW, an extra section of train 20W. It was traveling from Chicago to Croxton, New Jersey.

NS officials said no hazardous materials were involved. The railroad also advised shippers that movements between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, are subject to delays of 24 to 48 hours.

“The cause of the derailment is under investigation,” NS said in a statement that also noted that its workers as well as personnel employed by contractors were working to clear the derailed cars and repair track damage.

NS CEO Extols the Virtues of PSR

Norfolk Southern CEO touted the virtues of precision scheduled railroading this week during a presentation to investors, crowing about how the railroad is doing more with less.

That includes fewer trains, fewer employees and maybe soon fewer hump yard operations.

Squires said during the Morgan Stanley investor conference on Thursday morning that NS may idle more hump yards after closing humps at four classification yards this year.

NS has labeled its PSR plan as TOP21 and before it was implemented last year NS had 10 active hump yards.

But this year it has ceased hump operations in Bellevue; Sheffield, Alabama, Linwood, North Carolina, and Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Squires said that under the TOP21 operating plan NS has substantially reduced its dependence on major classification yards.

“Over the past year we’ve fundamentally changed the way we run our railroad to ensure the greatest efficiency across our operations,” Squires said.

“Step change is hardly adequate to describe the pace at which we’ve reduced resources and assets. And yet we’ve dramatically improved the service we’re providing to our customers and have created new capacity in the process.”

He said the potential exists for curtailing more hump operations.

NS has six hump yards still in operation including Elkhart, Indiana; Conway Yard near Pittsburgh; Enola Yard near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; and Macon, Georgia.

Some changes NS has implemented were a response to falling traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the end of dedicated auto rack trains due to auto assembly plants shutting down.

But once those plants resumed production, NS did not return to running auto rack trains but instead began carrying finished vehicles in the consists of general merchandise trains.

However, not all of the lost traffic is due to the pandemic. NS has seen its daily carloads fall 4 percent since TOP21 was fully implemented in July 2019.

Crew starts are 19 percent lower, train weight has increased 6 percent compared with last year, and the average train length has risen 11 percent.

NS has reduced its workforce by 24 percent since early 2019 and the active locomotive fleet is down 27 percent to 2,561 units as of July 31.

A surge in domestic containers has pushed NS intermodal volumes in recent weeks to fall peak levels as retailers seek to restock low inventories and e-commerce business and related parcel traffic has risen.

The carrier is working with such freight companies as J.B. Hunt, Hub Group, FedEx, and UPS to bring increase intermodal volume.