On Friday, July the 13th, I heard that the Reading and Lehigh Valley heritage locomotives of Norfolk Southern had tied up at Bellevue early that morning with a coal train of 865 empties that had come in from Detroit.
I got off work early and headed there to try and catch them. I didn’t have my computer and nobody that I called seemed to know anything so took a chance. Of course they weren’t there when I arrived.
I drove south to Marion hoping that I wasn’t too far behind the train with the heritage units. I got a couple northbound (railroad westbound) NS freights but saw no sign of a coal train.
Upon reaching Marion I was told by some railfans from Indiana (also searching for heritage power) that the 865 went west to Ft Wayne and then Muncie. I learned later that I had missed them by about an hour and that they went to Chicago where they headed a train bound for the Power River basin.
Bummed out, I headed east and followed the old Big Four/Erie line. After crossing U.S. 23, I caught a light Kansas City Southern power move. It was picking up a stack train at the Marion Industrial Center.
After getting this and some plant switchers, I continued east.
I didn’t get any activity at Galion but I did get pictures of the Erie bridge over Rt 309 at Ontario. This served a now closed GM plant. Look closely there is a small Erie diamond logo still showing.
My last photographs were of the only freight car painted for the ill fated Southern Pacific-CSX merger. SPSX 30034 was sitting outside a plant at Mansfield.
OK, there was no SP-CSX merger but I made you look).
All in all it was not a bad Friday the 13th.
Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon
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