On March 16, 2013, which was a day of the train show at Lake Land College in Kirtland, Craig Sanders and I started out in Perry in extreme winter conditions as a lake effect squall dumped heavy snow on the area.
We were fortunate to get great photos in a 24-minute span, which included a late Amtrak No. 48. The top image of a Norfolk Southern train illustrates the fierce elements.
Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited showed up at 8:42 a.m. and a CSX eastbound came along at 8:51 a.m.
We then retreated to the warm car. Later we would catch a train Painesville before heading to the rain show to work the Akron Railroad Club’s table. By then the snow had stopped.
It is afternoon in Boughtonville on a sunny January winter day in 2011. We’ve heard there is a westbound CSX manifest freight coming and have set up to capture it.
The train is stopped just beyond a grade crossing to wait for a signal at the crossovers in Boughtonville.
I decided to try something different in my composition by getting low and featuring the derail on a siding leading to a grain elevator.
I have a hunch this siding is seldom used but it was still in service at the time.
The first day of spring is March 20 when the spring equinox occurs in the Northern Hemisphere at 12:15 p.m. EDT, but this week has felt more like January than the cusp of spring.
At least where I live there is still considerable snow on the ground and snow showers were frequent throughout Northeast Ohio on Tuesday.
Light snow was falling as a Greater Cleveland RTA Green Line car made its way toward downtown Cleveland after making stop at the station on Warrensville Road in Shaker Heights.
It will run parallel to Shaker Boulevard all the way to Shaker Square in Cleveland.
It had been a while since I’d been able to get out with my camera. Car troubles and other matters had kept me at home as winter fell on Northeast Ohio in early January.
More than a week into the month, I finally got everything squared away and was able to get out of the house to go do some winter photography.
I had plans to go watch a college basketball game in Akron on a Tuesday night so I left the house early and stopped by Peninsula to see what I might find.
I knew better than to expect to catch a train on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. That operation was on hiatus until later in the month. But you can still do a lot without a train.
Several years ago I photographed the Peninsula train station during winter when it had icicles hanging on it. That was not the case on this day because the sun had melted them.
A step box on the platform had accumulated some snow and the platform area had footprints made by visitors to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Snow no longer covered the rails, but in the late day sunlight the ties on the siding were barely visible as the snow had that sunken look.
At the far north end of town sat a baggage car that had been used as a prop when the Polar Express trains were operating before Christmas. Beneath that car was bare ground.
There weren’t many people around on this day. It was still cold and winter is not a time of year when many people want to visit the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The Grand River Railway operates irregularly and probably not at all on Sundays.
So when I visited Grand River, Ohio, a while back in search of winter photographs, getting a train wasn’t on my expectation list.
We were actually hoping to find a switch engine out in the open that the GRR had been leasing, but it was nowhere to be seen near the Morton Salt Plant where the railroad stores its motive power.
But the trip wasn’t a bust because while in Grand River the town to make some images of the ice-covered Grand River the river, I liked how the snow was covering up the rails in some places.
The top image was made at a grade crossing that leads to a city park and a few private businesses. It has been a while since a train ran here.
The middle image is looking toward the street running in “downtown” Grand River. Note Pickle Bill’s restaurant on the right, whose entrance is by the tracks. Also note the boats in winter storage in the distance.
The bottom image was made from River Street, which ascends a hill alongside the tracks. The view is looking southeastward.
When the weather in the upper Midwest turns wintry, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited often runs late.
Earlier this month Nos. 48 and 49 were running six hours or more behind schedule due to the effects of winter conditions.
Delays in turning the equipment in Chicago were given some of the blame, but winter operating conditions can also lead to frozen switches, broken rails and freight train emergencies that are not Amtrak’s fault.
If No. 48 leaves Chicago late, it likely will get even later as it rolls eastward toward New York and Boston.
On a sunny but frigid day last week when the early morning temperatures were in the low teens and the wind chill was sub zero, I braved the elements to photograph No. 48 at Geneva, Ohio, where it came through more than two hours off schedule.
It was running a few minutes behind an eastbound CSX stack train. I can only speculate that the dispatcher put the intermodal train out ahead of Amtrak because it would not be stopping in Erie, Pennsylvania, but Amtrak would be.
The daylight is sliding away fast. It’s funny how quickly the sun seems to sink. All day it’s been hanging up there in the sky and then just like that it’s gone.
You’ve been out all day chasing trains and anything else that caught your eye, but now it is time to head for home.
But you cant’ help but keep your eye on the tracks and your ear to your scanner as you drive along hoping to get just one more — one for the road. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
Fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler and I were driving toward home on U.S. Route 20. Daylight was going fast.
But I had heard a train crew talking to the dispatcher about bulletin orders and the like and maybe, we could catch a westbound at the far west end of the yard along the Erie West Subdivision.
We turned down North Bend Road and much to our delight the light for a westbound was absolutely prime. We parked at a closed business and walked along the snowy road to the grade crossing.
We thought we had seen a headlight of a westbound when we had driven over the crossing, but it wasn’t what we thought it was. The train I had heard talking with the dispatch was in the yard and working.
An eastbound train was stopped on main track No. 2 for whatever reason. The eastbound signal for Track 1 displayed an approach aspect that soon went to clear. So much for getting a westbound.
To the west the sun was still hovering over the horizon, but not for long. As it set the sky turned to a brilliant orange and gold.
We spotted a headlight in the distance and it seemed to take an agonizingly long time to reach us. We were hoping to get a glint shot, but that was now out of the question.
We stayed with it and captured either the Q008 or Q010 rushing by, kicking up a little snow in its wake. It was a good way to end the day.
Where did the winter go? That’s a term more commonly heard about summer, a season that most people embrace, and not winter, a season that most people dread.
We had snow this winter, but not as much as I remember there being in past winters and for various reasons I didn’t get out when we had it to make any photographs.
It is not that I didn’t make photographs during the winter months, but when I did get out there was little to no snow on the ground.
So here it is April and this is one of the best snow and trains photograph that I have to show for the winter of 2016-2017.
Yeah, I know it is kind of lame, but at least there is snow in the image even if little of it.
There will always be another winter and the next one might have more opportunity than I care to have. But I’ll deal with that then.
Even on a dull day a fresh-painted Erie Lackawanna unit stood out. This is Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the winter of 1975. Typical of a locomotive service area back then, oil and sand were all over. White snow didn’t stay white very long. Goodies abound with not only the shiny Geep but other GP-7s, an Alco C-425, and transfer caboose T-14. Places like this just reeked railroad with the sights, sounds, and smells of an everyday working railroad. I feel blessed to have been able to visit places like this on the EL back then, to experience the “real deal.”
A UCI train (Cleveland Electric Illuminating) has outlawed at Hudson on a cold February 1979 afternoon.
The caboose of a Conrail eastbound is just clearing the CEI units. Hudson station still had an operator at this point who controlled this busy location.
The Cleveland & Pittsburgh mains, the crossovers, the wye to the Akron Branch (several trains a day), and the westward and eastward siding switches were handled by the operator as well as the Servo machine.
Today this former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline is as busy as ever, but the wye is only used to spin power. The branch is out of service 400 feet south of the point switch.
The eastward siding is gone and the westward siding is stub-ended and little used.
The station has been leveled and the “Yellowbirds” are no longer Cleveland Electric units.
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