The sun has recently come up on the morning of June 22, 1978, and is glinting from the sides of Amtrak F40PH No. 282 and E units 473, 412 and their late-running westbound Broadway Limited passing through Massillon on Conrail’s Fort Wayne Line.
Ongoing track work east of Massillon has slowed the progress of No. 41.
Today there is no Broadway Limited passing through Massillon or anywhere else. This area is so treed in that taking this shot is impossible.
The Eaton Corporation plant is still there but not easily photographed from this bridge. Between the Conrail tracks and the Eaton facility runs the ex-Baltimore & Ohio/Chessie System line that ran from Bridgeport to Warwick, Ohio. R.J. Corman now owns this line.
This is a very early scan from an old computer. Baltimore & Ohio E9A No. 1456 leads the westbound Diplomat as it is about to stop at Akron Union Depot in the late 1960s. The train to its left is an eastbound Erie Lackawanna freight.
The morning of Oct. 23 in Porter, Indiana, was pleasant but skies had sun and clouds mixed. That meant playing a game of “dodge the clouds” whenever a train showed up.
Such was the case with the arrival of the Amtrak Train 49, the Lake Shore Limited.
If you look toward the front of the train you’ll see it is in sunlight. But the two New York section Viewliner sleepers and baggage car are still in shadows because a cloud hadn’t moved enough out of the way of the sun.
Still I like the contrast between the “dark” end of the train and the brilliant fall foliage in sunlight above and to the side of No. 49.
The train is in the middle of the CP 482 interlocking, which is a junction of the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern, the Grand Rapids Subdivision of CSX, the Amtrak Michigan District and the NS Porter branch.
METX 90 backing the train onto the Metra Electric in Blue Island, Illinois.South Shore 2009 leads across the Canadian National diamond at Stillwell, Indiana.The AARPCO special navigates the remaining 10th street running at Michigan City, Indiana.Caritas brings up the rear. This remnant of the street trackage has lost its wires and is only used by freight and diesel-powered equipment moves. All the houses and businesses on the south side of the street have been torn down and construction of a new double track line has begun. Eleventh Street is already been torn up and a new track is being laid. When complete the former single track street trackage will be completely double tracked and on private right of way. It’s sad to see but it will certainly improve speeds and schedules by eliminating this bottleneck.
I was in the Chicago area for Labor Day weekend. The plan was to do some railfanning and visit the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois, on Saturday and the Heston Steam Museum in LaPorte County, Indiana, on Sunday.
While I did visit IRM, Sunday’s plans were radically changed.
After railfanning Metra near downtown Chicago, I proceeded to Grayslake station on the Northwest side.
This is on the former Milwaukee Road North line and sees Metra, Canadian Pacific, and Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service as well as the Empire Builder. Across the street is a hobby shop which I also visited.
Some customers informed me that a passenger car special would go by northbound around 1 p.m. It was just after that so I assumed It had not been by yet (I had not seen it downtown either).
A few other trains went by and then the northbound track which was green changed to a red signal.
A few minutes later a train led by METX No. 90, Metra’s Chicago & North Western heritage paint, came with what turned out to be the American Association of Private Passenger Car Owners special.
As it turned out their convention was in Chicago that weekend and it was running over most of Metra’s routes.
It had left Chicago earlier in the morning and run out to Elgin on the Milwaukee Road West mainline and had returned but taking the wye to turn north. This is how I had missed it. It was now returning south to Chicago and I got a special catch.
I then continued on my journey to IRM which was open late (9:30 p.m. instead of the usual 6 p.m. closing time).
I discovered that AARPCO was running a whole series of trips which would continue the rest of Saturday and into the next week.
After I had caught it, the special continued through Union Station and went to Joliet via the former Gulf, Mobile & Ohio line. It then reversed and took the Rock Island district to LaSalle Street Station.
This brings me to Sunday morning. Sunday’s trip would go west to Blue Island then east on the Metra Electric to Kensington.
There it would be handed off to the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend to Michigan City, Indiana, through the remaining street running and then head south to Kingsbury on a former Nickel Plate line that the South Shore now operates as freight only.
This is very rare mileage as the Metra Electric has never hosted a diesel powered passenger train and the Kingsbury line has not seen a passenger movement in 75 years.
Needless to say the Heston museum plans were thrown out and the AARPCO special would be the day’s focus.
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?
Catching and photographing the CSX executive train in its distinctive and attractive Baltimore & Ohio inspired livery has been on my “to do” list ever since the scheme debuted.
But the executive train doesn’t operate all that often and when it does you have to be in the right place at the right time.
That right place and right time for me occurred on May 11. I happened to be in Cleveland on business and had the opportunity to spend time in Berea that morning.
I saw on Heritage Units.com that the three CSX F40PH-2 units were on the road, having left Buffalo, New York, around 6:15 a.m. en route to Chicago.
I figured that would put them through Berea around mid to late morning depending on traffic and dispatching preference.
Sure enough, there were some railfans on hand waiting for train P001, including Akron Railroad Club President Todd Dillon. He had information that P001 blew through Collinwood Yard on Cleveland’s east side and would soon be bearing down on us. That would put it through Berea not long after 9 a.m.
I stood near the tree by the Dave McKay memorial with a cluster of other railfans and waited. It wasn’t long before I could hear P001 calling signal indications over the radio.
Then a headlight came into view. I looked through my camera lens and waited. At that point it seemed as though the train had stopped.
In fact, it had. Just east of Berea a broken air hose sent the train into emergency.
Although CSX dispatched a maintenance truck to the scene, it wasn’t needed. The crew resolved the problem and P001 was on the move, albeit at restricted speed.
Among the onlookers watching the train come through were Rita and Rich Volosyn of Brunswick. Their son Paul was the locomotive engineer assigned to P001 and was working from Buffalo to Willard.
Also on hand was a CSX special agent to ensure that no one got too close to the tracks.
The 12-car train was led by CSX1, CSX2 and CSX3. The trio of F40s are former Amtrak units. They were lined up elephant style and made for an impressive sight.
CSX1 was built in April 1978 and given Amtrak roster number 280. After being retired by Amtrak, it was picked up by the Ohio Central System, where it continued to carry roster number 280.
After CSX acquired the unit, it renumbered it 9998. Upon being repainted into the B&O scheme, it was renumbered CSX1.
On the rear of the train was theater car W. Thomas Rice. But its shades were drawn, which suggested no one was aboard. The train also featured dome car Moonlight Dome. Built in 1947 for the Chesapeake & Ohio for its planned but never launched Chessie streamliner.
The B&O acquired the car in December 1950 where it operated on the Shenandoah and, after October 1963, the Capitol Limited. It later ran on the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Coast Line before ending up on the Amtrak roster. After being sold by Amtrak Moonlight Dome had a series of owners, including The Cincinnati Railway Company, which sold it to CSX in 2020.
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.
Although I lived near Warwick, I only photographed one or two Baltimore & Ohio passenger trains through there. It is 1966 or 1967, and here is Baltimore & Ohio 3516 westbound. I really like the image of the trainman giving a friendly wave.
The not-so-way-back machine has landed us in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, on July 11, 2010, to check out an unusual visitor to the suburb of Pittsburgh.
The Iowa Interstate has sent a two-car business train to Oakmont pulled by GP38-2 No. 709. The train was in town for the Ladies Professional Golf Association’s U.S. Open that was being held at the Oakmont Country Club. The parent company of IAIS is Railroad Development Corporation, which is based in Pittsburgh and may have been a corporate sponsor of the tournament.
No. 709 is no stranger to Pittsburgh. It was built in June 1972 for Penn Central, so it probably worked and passed through the Steel City many times in its PC and, later, Conrail career.
I made this image on the last day of the tournament, a Sunday. That day began with my meeting up with Roger Durfee. Before heading to Pittsburgh to photograph this train, we caught two Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad trains at Akron Northside Station while standing on the All-American Bridge, a.k.a. the Y bridge.
We also got a Wheeling & Lake Erie train in Akron and a westbound Norfolk Southern westbound intermodal train near Columbiana on the Fort Wayne Line. So it was a busy day.
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