Midweek Photos 3/24/2021

Durand Station • Michigan • February 23, 2021

Durand Station after a heavy snow storm.

CN Locomotive speeding over a diamond crossover.

A southern Michigan Short Line, Huron Eastern Railroad.

If Lionel or MTH manufacture this locomotive, I would purchase one or two.

Huron Eastern Railroad backing into the Durand Yard from the main line from Flint, Michigan.

A CN locomotive just south of Durand Yard on the Main Line Curve.

Hope to see you out rail-fanning. Gary

And now for something very different...last week I posted mainline action on Norfolk Southern. This week, we're looking at a storied shortline, the Pittsburgh & Ohio Central.

The POHC was originally two PRR lines, the Chartiers Branch to Washington, PA, and the famed Panhandle to St. Louis. During the Conrail days, most of the Panhandle was made into a trail, and the Chartiers Branch was sold off to a RailAmerica subsidiary, the Pittsburgh Industrial Railroad. Above, you see one of the road's original SW1500s, still in its PIR paint, returning from south of the NS interchange. This unit recently returned to POHC after several years in Indiana.

The second of the day's two crews returns from working the NS interchange with GP10M 1711. The Pittsburgh Industrial was bought by Jerry Joe Jacobson's Ohio Central in the late 90s, which itself was bought up by G&W in the early 2000s.

The conductor remounts 1711 after protecting a grade crossing in an industrial park. Until 2018, it was very common to see engines still in their OC paint; the last OC unit, a GP10, was scrapped, and the last POHC unit in maroon was sent to the Buffalo and Pittsburgh 1711 is the last POHC-lettered engine on the property.

Having exchanged their SW1500 for a former Southern GP38-2, the first crew grabbed some cars off the interchange string to take to Washington Penn Plastics. Here, the unit crosses Chartiers Creek in Bridgeville, PA. You can see my tripod out to catch this unique shot.

The Arden turn passes the former PRR Boyce Station, now a law office. This was my first time shooting and editing in RAW, and while I still need to work on fine-tuning my color balancing skills, I am pleased with the results, particularly given that my camera is quite possibly 15 years old.

I caught some action on the Providence & Worcester in Worcester, MA the past two weekends.  

The first set of photos were taken on Sunday, March 14th.  A pair of locomotives—including a Connecticut Southern unit—made their way out of the Worcester engine terminal (behind me) and onto the main, then backed onto the train which already had one engine waiting.  You can see a train up on the CSX (former Boston & Albany) line in the background.

Here’s the same train now under power moving northward at a different vantage point...

Here’s a unique-looking (at least to me!) car in the consist.  I’m guessing it’s a steel coil car, but it doesn’t look like the ones I’m used to seeing.  Does anyone know for sure?

Here’s the same location this past Saturday, March 20th.  This time the P&W train is heading southbound...

Saw these yesterday just north of Detroit, Michigan.

Union Pacific and several CN locomotives. Plus some fun with Adobe Photoshop.

Hope to see you out rail-fanning. Gary 🚂

Last Saturday, my wife and I got out of the house and took a drive out onto the 2-lane highways, heading north from Amarillo, through Hooker, OK, and Liberal, KS, continuing north to Satanta, Kansas.  Where, you say?  Satanta was the junction two former Santa Fe branch lines: the C V District and the Manter District.  The C V was 90 lb. rail and good for 40 MPH.  The Manter -- which went north to Dodge City -- was lighter rail and 30 MPH.  

But that was then.  In the 1990's, Santa Fe spun off those two lines to the Cimmaron Valley Railroad, which is headquartered at Satanta and was noted until recently for its use of EMD GP30's.  Recently, they purchased some GE units (B39-6, I think) and the GP30's are either out of service or on standby.  The GE's were inside the engine house for the weekend, but one GP30 (former Denver & Rio Grande Western) was sitting outside and had been used recently.  One of the CV employees repainted the old lettering on a crossbuck.  They take pride in their little railroad on the prairie.  

The photos of the track are to show you that, when you're in Satanta, you're way out there in the wheat fields.  

West of Liberal (which has a really good pancake house) I snapped a wedge shot of a westbound Union Pacific stack train, running about 50 MPH on the former Rock Island Golden State Route.  The old Rock Island triangular color light signals are long gone, replaced with the ubiquitous modular color light signals that all railroads now use, except that this one was lighted with LED's.  There was no apparent reason for this train to be making 50 MPH instead of 70, except that it was Saturday, and UPRR may be running its weekend transcontinental trains at reduced speed to save fuel.  Arriving in Los Angeles on Sunday evening would be a bad idea, as the containers and trailers would not be needed by the consignees until Monday.  The containers would have to be unloaded and stacked, then unstacked on Monday for delivery.

@Number 90 Nice snaps, Tom.  I really like the colors in your shot of 8745!

This photo is from back in February when we were getting on loaded ethanol train 64H in Chattanooga, TN.

More from Durand Station - February 23, 2021

The view from the diamond crossover.

GTW Conductor with Covid-19 mask.

The engineer wearing his Covid-19 mask.

Durand Station is my favorite place to go rail-fanning. Not only a lot of train action going by the station. Seventy-five trains per day a long with a lot of train related businesses.

I was out rail-fanning today at Plymouth Yard. Rail-fanning is like fishing, no catches today. CSX did come into the yard but I was on the other side of the yard.

Hope to see you out rail-fanning. Gary 🚂