Winter at the Painesville Depot

An eastbound CSX container train passes the former New York Central passenger station in Painesville on Feb. 2, 2014. The depot has been restored and now houses a railroad museum.

Photograph by Craig Sanders

Saturday Morning Surprise

I saw on HeritageUnits.com on Saturday morning that NS Train 265 (23K) was through North East, Pennsylvania, at 8:03a.m. with the NS Penn Central heritage unit leading. I looked at

the North East webcam to verify. About 9:20 a.m. I was set up at Riverside Drive in Painesville. About 9:30 I heard horns but they were coming from the west. I crossed the street and shot Train 316 with superb lighting.

I now had time to go to Perry and set up at Maple Street to get NS No. 1073. I got it at 10 a.m. Take note of the engineer’s side number board.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

NYC Geeps in Painesville

It’s been a while since the wayback machine has taken us back to the New York Central in Painesville. A pair of GP7s, Nos. 5740 and 5757 are in Painesville waiting their next assignment in February or March 1968. This was during the transition to the Penn Central era.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Something Special on Amtrak No. 48

I saw online that Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited had P42DC No. 108, the Phase VI livery leading on Tuesday morning.

This scheme has been described by Amtrak as “transitional” as well as a celebration of the passenger carrier’s 50^th anniversary.

I got up early and went down to the Painesville station. No. 48 was reported to have left Cleveland on time at 5:50 a.m.

My camera showed a time stamp of 6:12 a.m. on my images.

Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

Wanna Go for a Ride?

It is 1967 or 1968 in what looks to be Painesville. New York Central E8A No. 4079 is on the point of this westbound passenger train. Care to take a ride?

Photograph by Robert Farkas

CSX Executive Train Passes Through Painesville

The CSX executive train made a pass through Northeast Ohio on Wednesday morning en route from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago. The train was pulled by three F40 locomotives, CSX 1, CSX 2 and CSX 3, running elephant style and adorned with the Baltimore & Ohio-inspired livery.

The 12-car train is shown above passing through Painesville by the former New York Central passenger station at 8:10 a.m.

Featured in the middle image is dome car Moonlight Dome. The third image shows platform observation car John T. Collinson and theater car W. Thomas Rice.

Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

A Very Productive Sunday Morning

We were up early on Sunday for a pancake breakfast at the Willoughby Hills Community Center, a visit to Lake Metroparks Farmpark, grocery shopping at Heinen’s in Chardon, but also, of course, a great catch of a two-and-a-half late eastbound Lake Shore Limited with Midnight Blue P42DC No. 100 on the point and Downeaster F40 cab car No. 90213 in the consist. It was ideal weather of sunny and 62 degrees but very windy. We accomplished all this by noon.

It is not clear why the F40 cab car was on No. 48. It had gone west on Saturday morning on No. 49 only to turn around in Chicago and go back east that same night.

In the photographs above, No. 48 is shown passing the former New York Central passenger station in Painesville.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

Catching up With the NKP Heritage Unit

I saw Wednesday night that CSX train Q567 with the Nickel Plate Road heritage unit of Norfolk Southern was coming up the Hudson River. I was hoping I would have some good luck on Thursday for my first photographs of 2022. I waited a little over an hour and it did arrive about 1 p.m. Despite being a cold 27 degrees, it was sunny in the perfect spot and I came away very happy with the results. The train was captured at milepost 153 in Painesville on the Erie West Subdivision.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

Super Sunday Memory

For a few years in the decade of the 2010s. Ed Ribinskas, Marty Surdyk and myself got together during the winter for a day railfanning in Lake County. Some of those outings occurred on Super Bowl Sunday. It wasn’t planned that way. It just happened.

Perhaps the most memorable of those Super Bowl Sunday outings occurred on Feb. 2, 2014. It had rained the day before and then snowed overnight. The result was some of the most beautiful winter conditions I’ve seen during a railfan photo outing. Nearly everything was coated in snow and it stayed that way throughout the day.

CSX was rather busy on that 2014 Sunday. It was the height of the crude oil by rail boom from the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana. Several of the trains we photographed were tank car trains led by BNSF motive power. Let me tell you pumpkins look good in the snow.

But today I am spotlighting an image made early during our outing. Marty had picked me up at my house and we had just picked up Ed at his house in Painesville. We were on our way to the CSX crossing at Bowhall Road when we crossed the former Painesville, Fairport & Eastern.

This is now a Norfolk Southern branch line to Fairport Harbor to serve a chemical plant and, perhaps, a few other customers.

I probably made this image by rolling down the driver’s side window and getting some grab shots as we crossed the tracks, which are now known as the Fairport Industrial Track. You will note in the image above milepost 3, which is measured from Perry where the ex-FP&E connects with the NS Lake Erie District.

At one time the FP&E extended beyond Perry to Unionville but that track is now gone.

As nice a setting as the ex-FP&E line is at Bowhall Road was, I knew the odds of getting a train here were slim to none because the local out of Conneaut that serves the branch didn’t run on Sunday. So I made a few photographs on the fly and we continued on to a busier rail line.

Trestle Tales: The End Less Photographed

Most of the images Ed Ribinskas has made of the former Nickel Plate Road trestle over the Grand River in Painesville were made at the east end of the bridge.

He stayed away from the west end for several years to avoid trespassing on the property of Coe Manufacturing. Another factor was that it would be a tight shot because of tree growth that dated back to the end of the steam locomotive era.

After Coe Manufacturing closed and its building were razed, Ed felt more comfortable scouting for photo angles at the west end.

Nonetheless, it was still a tight shot. The best time of year to photograph the west end of the trestle was during the winter.

“Probably the very few times I photographed there resulted in my best and favorites,” Ed wrote.

The bottom two photographs were made of westbound manifest freight 145 at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2014 (Super Bowl Sunday).

With Ed that day were fellow Akron Railroad Club members Marty Surdyk and Craig Sanders.

The top two images were made in early afternoon on May 6, 2018.

Photographs by Edward Ribinskas