During a Transitional Era in Ashtabula

It is a late November day in 2008, a Sunday to be exact. A few days earlier a snowstorm had swept through Northeast Ohio but on the CSX Erie West Subdivision the passing trains have blown the snow off the tracks.

Peter Bowler and I got together on a photo outing that covered CSX between Perry and Ashtabula. We made a stop at North Bend Road, which crosses the CSX tracks west of the entrance to the yard.

I had photographed this signal bridge a year earlier when it had signal heads for Tracks 1 and 2. But now a track configuration within the past year has resulted in the removal of the Type G signal heads for Track 1 eastbound.

Shown is a westbound approaching North Bend Road that appears to be coming out of the yard.

A decade later on Jan. 14, 2018, Peter and I would visit this location again. By then modern signals had been installed and were in operation further to the east to control movements at the west end of the yard.

The signal bridge shown in the image above was still standing but sans all signal heads. I haven’t been back to this location since then but a check of Google Maps streetview showed the signal bridge has since been removed.

Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders

On Photography: The Emotional Power of an Average Image Made During a Memorable Outing

For more than 13 years the photograph shown above sat in a plastic sleeve in a binder on a shelf in my home office.

It shows Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited passing the former New York Central passenger station in Ashtabula on April 22, 2007.

No. 48 has never stopped here to receive or discharge passengers.

I’m with Marty Surdyk and this is our first photo opportunity of the day. No. 48 is on time, having left Cleveland on the advertised at 7 a.m.

This image is the third of six that I made of this passage of Amtrak No. 48 on a splendid spring morning through Ashtabula.

I do not consider it the best of the lot, although it might be second best. When I looked at this image initially, I saw flaws. What you are seeing is a cropped version.

I was using an 18 to 200 mm zoom lens with my Canon Rebel G camera and given where we were standing, this was as far in as I could get with that lens.

The best image of the six I made is a wide-angle shot that shows more of the locomotives and train. It was the image we had in mind making when choosing where we stood to make photographs.

Shooting the train with the depot in the frame was almost an afterthought. The slide – probably made on Fuji film – sat in that binder until this week.

I was working on an article for the soon-to-be launched Akron Railroad Club eBulletin about one of my most memorable railfan outings.

I saw image and decided to scan it. It was only when I was processing the image in Photoshop that the meaning of it began to come into focus.

This image captures less than a second of an outing that lasted about 12 hours. Yet that was enough to make what photographers describe as “a moment.”

As moments go, this one is not likely to resonate with many people because they don’t see what I see. You probably see an Amtrak train and an old depot. There is nothing out of the ordinary or dramatic about this scene.

More sophisticated viewers are thinking it would be a better photograph had the photographer waited a millisecond or two before tripping the shutter. That would have put the lead locomotive more to far right side of the frame and helped to cover some of the clutter.

The poles in the foreground are also clutter even if there is nothing that anyone could have done about them short of removing them from the image in Photoshop.

If this image was being judged, it probably would be rated as average. Next!

But as I looked at this photograph again I saw something that is not so obvious to the casual viewer who does not know what I do about this moment and image.

Winters are long and harsh in Northeast Ohio and this photograph was made during one of the first, if not the first, warm and sunny day of the year when I had an opportunity to get out to railfan.

The image was made not long after Amtrak rescheduled No. 48 to depart Cleveland at 7 a.m. That meant opportunities throughout much of the year to photograph an Amtrak train in daylight in Northeast Ohio.

This was the first opportunity that I had to take advantage of that. Amtrak is one of my favorite railroads and I seldom have opportunities to photograph its operations in Ohio in daylight.

Those 7 a.m. departures from Cleveland did not last long. Today, Amtrak is scheduled to leave Cleveland at 5:50 a.m.

I also like the juxtaposition of a passenger train passing a station that has not served that purpose for almost 18 years.

At one time Ashtabula was the northern terminus for NYC passenger trains originating in Pittsburgh and coming up from Youngstown. Sleepers were interchanged here with Chicago-New York trains.

What a busy place this must have been. Passenger trains on the Youngstown Line lasted through the late 1950s.

But aside from all of that, this image reminds me of one of my better railfan outings. Spring is the season of renewal so a good spring day is a promise of good days ahead.

Getting this Amtrak train was a promising start to what turned out to be a special day.

Above all it reminds me that although moments are fleeting they live on in our memories and warm, entertain and even inspire us time and again.

Dodging and Using Clouds in Ashtabula

There wasn’t much going on in the harbor yard of Norfolk Southern in Ashtabula on this Sunday in November.

What is it with clouds whenever I visit Ashtabula? The past two times that I’ve been there the clouds played a significant role in my photography.

I don’t get to Ashtabula often and it it just happened that I made two visit there less than a month apart this past fall.

The first visit wasn’t quite planned. Fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler and I had ventured out to Lake County hoping to photograph the Baltimore & Ohio inspired livery on the switcher of the Grand River Railway.

But it was a Sunday and the switcher was locked behind a fence with no chance of getting a clear view.

So we started making our way toward Ashtabula. On this day, though, at least there was some sun.

Our first destination was the harbor yard of Norfolk Southern. There wasn’t anything going on there, but we walked out on the bridge over the yard anyway to photograph what we could find.

The nice thing about a slumbering yard is that we could afford to wait for the sun to find a hole in the clouds and then get our photographs without missing anything.

Then it was on to the bridge carrying the NS Cleveland-Buffalo line over the Ashtabula River, which Peter had never photographed.

There is a closed wooden street bridge on Topper Avenue that offers a view of the NS Ashtabula River trestle. I had not been there in a few years and wondered if the wood bridge was still there.

It took some trial and error to find it, but we were pleased to see that the wood bridge still exists and continues to be used as a walkway.

Alas, there were no NS trains near Ashtabula on the former Nickel Plate Road during our stay. There was an eastbound in Conneaut, but that train was already through Ashtabula.

We made a mental note to come back to Ashtabula and stake out the bridge during the morning hours when the lighting would be better and, presumably, rail traffic more plentiful.

That opportunity came on the day of the ARRC end of the year dinner. The weather forecast was promising. There would be mostly sunny skies.

But that had changed by Friday night when I watched a weather report on a Cleveland TV station. The good news was that a high pressure system would be over Ohio on Saturday. The bad new was that it had stalled, thus allowing low-lying clouds to fill in until the system began moving eastward.

As we drove to Ashtabula on Saturday morning, the clouds dutifully filled the sky just as the forecaster had predicted that they would. By the time we got to the bridge, the skies were overcast.

As it turned out, that didn’t matter. Once again, I heard on the radio a pair of eastbound trains at Conneaut, which wasn’t doing us any good.

The dispatcher talked about a westbound, the 205, that was somewhere in Pennsylvania. But we needed eastbounds.

We checked out a grade crossing in Ashtabula at which to photograph the 205. The photos that I made there are so mediocre that I didn’t bother posting them.

Somewhere behind the 205 was the 145, so we drove to Conneaut to intercept it. I also hoped to catch the outbound train on the former Bessemer & Lake Erie. But the B&LE road channel was quiet so maybe that train wasn’t running today.

My photos of the westbound in Conneaut were OK because the clouds there were not as thick as they had been in Ashtabula.

With the B&LE quiet we elected to return to Ashtabula and give the bridge one more chance.

We had not been there long when I heard an eastbound calling signals on the radio. It turned out to be the 206.

The images I made are all right, yet not what I had hoped to get. We need to make a return trip to Ashtabula on a day when a high pressure system is moving the clouds out, not enticing them to form.

We photographed the 206 and began making out way back west, swinging past the Grand River Railway. Once again, the switcher was locked behind closed gates.

At last the high pressure system was starting to move on and the clouds were breaking up.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Those gale-force winds blowing in off Lake Erie were downright cold.

A pair of Union Pacific locomotive await their next assignment.

Yeah, the clouds blocked the sun a lot, but they also helped to add some visual interest to the scene.

The 206 crosses the trestle over the Ashtabula River. I like the image I made, but it only whetted my appetite to get another train on a day with better light.

The time to make this shot is in the late fall, winter or early spring when there aren’t many, if any, leaves on the trees.

The fence on the bridge in Ashtabula isn’t that high, but watch out for the vines growing on the top of it.

Rounding the curve in Ashtabula on the way east with UPS trailers on NS train 206.

Although the clouds were starting to move out, there were still plenty of them as NS train 145 slowly ambles into Conneaut for a crew change.

 

Windy, Cold Day at NS Ashtabula Harbor Yard

Nothing was moving on a windy Sunday afternoon when we visited the Ashtabula Harbor Yard of Norfolk Southern.

Man was it windy up there. And cold, too.

We were standing on the bridge that spans Ashtabula Harbor Yard of Norfolk Southern. On nearby Lake Erie, the gales of November were whipping up water in giant waves and splashing it with great force against the harbor breakwater walls.

The yard had the look of a facility that isn’t terribly busy these days. Recent news reports have stated that coal traffic on NS is down.

Falling coal revenues have hurt the railroad’s bottom line and are said by some to have played a role in Canadian Pacific’s bid to buy NS.

But I wasn’t thinking about stock prices or coal traffic revenues as I fought to say warm against the howling winds.

More to the point, fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler and I were watching the clouds and waiting for creases and openings for the sun to pop through and light up the yard.

I wasn’t aware until this day that railfans have opened a few unofficial camera ports in the chain line fence on the north side of the bridge where the sidewalk is.

We got our photographs and then headed out in search of dramatic photographs along the Lake Erie shore of the wave action.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

If you were patient, it was a good day for capturing cloud patterns to add some interest to your photographs.

Some of the tracks in the yard were empty and open spaces show where tracks used to be.

A pair of Union Pacific locomotives sit idle between road assignments.

The Ashtabula lighthouse still stands guard at the entrance to the harbor. Our efforts to find a way to get closer to it proved to be fruitless.

Heritage Meet in Ashtabula: NKP 765, NS 1069

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.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

December Saturday in Ashtabula

We went to Ashtabula last Saturday (Dec. 22) in search of the Penn Central heritage locomotive.. Upon arriving at the Norfolk Southern yard we found it parked where it was not very accessible. I got some long range shots but no close ups.

Disappointed, we headed to the CSX diamonds. On the way we heard a CSX train calling for yarding instructions.

Arriving at the CSX yard, we saw the empty coal train taking the connection for the docks. We quickly did a u-turn and went back to the NS yard.

The CSX train went thru the yard and looped the entire train. It then headed south past the drawbridge to yard the train.

The yard is not very big and will not hold a standard unit train on a single track. Trains must cut in half on two tracks in order to fit.

This made for some interesting photos of the backup move. Next we finished out the day with some mainline action where the OD tower once stood.

Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon