I only visited Alliance during the Conrail era once. That came on May 23, 1998, when I was with Dan Davidson. We spent much of our time there that day photographing the westbound signal bridge at the east end of the interlocking plant. At the time, it still had Pennsylvania Railroad position light signals. Both trains shown above are headed eastward on the Fort Wayne Line. Since then I’ve visited Alliance numerous times in the Norfolk Southern era.
Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders
Penn Central GP40 No. 3186 is westbound about to cross under the ex-Pennsylvania Railroad signal bridge just west of Broadway Avenue in Canton in September 1972.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
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
Conrail SD 60 No. 6754 SD 50 No. 6711 are on the point of an eastbound train in the Canton yard on Jan. 17, 1987. This is former Pennsylvania Railroad territory as evidenced by the position light signals on the Fort Wayne Line.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Conrail was more than three years old when this image of an eastbound was made in Alliance. But note that the third and fourth locomotives in the power consist still wear Penn Central markings and colors.
Conrail SD40-2 No. 6405 was built in September 1977 and would later become CSX 8819.
I’ve always enjoyed using signal bridges as photo props in railfan photography.
One of my favorites was the former New York Central signal bridge at the west end of the Ashtabula yard near the grade crossing with North Bend Road.
It was easily accessible without any trespassing on railroad property. The signals shown in these images were for eastbound traffic so the best photos were westbounds.
The top photo shows a Conrail train on April 16, 1989.
The remaining photos were made on May 4 2007. In the last photo behind the BNSF units another road crossing can be seen.
Past that crossing and closer to the entrance of the yard is where a relocated signal bridge is now in use, obviously without NYC style signals.
These are another example of what I’m glad I got when I got it.
Over the years I photographed CSX trains passing beneath this signal bridge at the far west end of the yard in Ashtabula.
But with the conversion to positive train control, CSX like many Class 1 railroads, decided to replace many older signals on busy main lines with newer signals.
In some instances, the new signals were in a different location than the signals they replaced.
Such was the case in Ashtabula. As you can see, the new signals are closer to the yard itself.
This image was made near sunset on a very cold January day in 2018. I was hoping to get a westbound coming into that late day light but had no such luck.
But it made for a nice image anyway. I haven’t been back to this location since making this image so I don’t know if this old signal bridge that dates to the New York Central years is still standing or has been removed.
Sometimes you can wait for hours and never get the train you want to make for the photograph that you have in mind.
Back in August Marty Surdyk, Todd Vander Sluis and myself waited for more than hour with hopes of getting a westbound Norfolk Southern train passing beneath the new and old signal bridges in Huron, Ohio at CP 232.
It was apparent that the NS signal department planned to cut in the new signals any day now and take down the old signals, which were among the few still in operation on the NS Chicago Line with Type G signal heads.
We didn’t have the luxury of coming back on another day if we didn’t get the image we wanted on this day.
It was frustrating to hear the Toledo East dispatcher talking to trains to the west and east of Huron.
Finally, we got a train, but it was an eastbound. I made the image that appears in the bottom of the sequence above.
Not longer after that train passed our opportunity to get a westbound came.
So did a bank of clouds. I got the image I wanted, but not in the brilliant later afternoon sunshine that had been present for much of our wait.
It would be the only westbound that passed through Huron before we had to leave. At least I came away with something.
I didn’t journey to North East, Ohio, last spring for the express purpose of photographing the signal bridge at CP 73, which is located east of the Lake Shore Railway Museum.
But since I was there and I noticed that the CSX signal department was out in force putting in new signals, I decided I better get an image of the old signals.
The top and middle images were made on May 23. Note the new signals at the far left of both images are ready to be placed into service.
The bottom image was made eight days later and features Q020 charging eastbound on Track No. 2 of the Erie West Subdivision.
It was a good thing I made this photo because the following week these signals fell. There are only a handful of the old-style Type G signal heads mounted on their original masts or signal bridges left on CSX between Cleveland and Buffalo, New York.
There is golden light and then there is golden light. The golden hour is a term used by photographers to describe an hour before sunset.
Sunlight during that time tends to be warm and give objects a golden glow.
Even light in the last two to three hours of the day can be warm, particularly during the winter months when there is a low sun angle.
To take advantage of golden light at its best, you have to move fast because that light doesn’t last long. If you enjoy photographing trains you have to be lucky that one will come along during that small window of opportunity.
On this particular day that type of luck was not with us. We couldn’t get a westbound when we really needed it.
But we didn’t do too bad, either. That light looks nice on those aluminum signal standards and the train working in the yard in Ashtabula.
The vantage point is from the grade crossing of North Bend Road on the west side of Ashtabula.
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