Tabla de contenidos para February 2023 en Trains

Today’s diesel locomotives commonly operate in revenue service for more than 40 years, and it can be difficult to follow how many railroads a particular locomotive might serve during its lifetime. That’s not the case with Green Mountain Railroad RS1 No. 405. This Alco, built at Schenectady, N.Y., for the Rutland Railroad in 1951, has spent the past 71 years toiling in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York. Rutland shut down in 1961, but the Alco didn’t leave the property. In 1965, the late F. Nelson Blount bought the still-young 1,000-hp locomotive to handle freight over 52 miles of leased, state-owned former Rutland trackage between Bellows Falls and Rutland. Additional used Alcos came and went on the Green Mountain until No. 405 was the last. Meanwhile, the principals of the…

The weather on Jan. 2, 1966 was miserable, but it was the day when all the calculations, technological hardware, and basic railroading experience would be tested on Southern Railway’s Appalachia District. So far, so good: Extra No. 3003 East was rolling along without problems as it approached the top of the first long grade after departing the cramped yard at Andover, Va. The enormous coal train groaned by with three new SD35s and a single SD24 on the point running near full throttle. A procession of loaded coal hoppers followed — with reporting marks for the Southern, Interstate, Norfolk & Western, and Chesapeake & Ohio — all brimming with various blends of Appalachian bituminous headed for consignees all over the Southeast. The difference between this train and others soon…

NEVADA NORTHERN RAILWAY CELEBRATED 35 years of operating passenger trains behind historic steam locomotives by bringing back its Iron Horse Symposium, an event last held before the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. The weekend-long symposium in late September included steam-and diesel-powered train rides, special presentations on the railway’s history, and behind-the-scenes tours of the East Ely, Nev., shop facilities. The event concluded with working demonstrations of historic equipment, including two steam locomotives, 2-8-0s Nos. 81 and 93, along with Alco RS2 and Alco RS3 diesels, and the railway’s restored Baldwin VO1000 diesel switcher, which returned to operation in 2022 after sitting idle for 39 years. Nevada Northern’s steam-powered wrecking crane — the oldest operating crane on any U.S. railroad — demonstrated its lifting power for symposium attendees. In addition, historic…

WHILE BIG OPERATING STEAM LOCOMOTIVES ARE EXCITING and grab considerable attention, there is room for small steam locomotives in today’s restoration world. What these diminutive steamers lack in girth, they more than make up for with the roll they played in American railroading. The American Industrial Railroad Society is working to shed light on the small locomotive story. The group, based in Davenport, Iowa, has acquired Indiana Northern Railroad No. 4, an 0-4-0, tender-type locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in January 1913. The locomotive was purchased by AIRS in 2020 and relocated to a restoration site in Davenport, where volunteers are working to return the dismantled engine to operational status in its as-built appearance. AIRS was established in 2020 with a mission to preserve, restore, and interpret equipment,…

A The BL2 was to be the solution to branch line power challenges. The name even said so. “BL” stands for “Branch Line.” By the late 1930s to early 1940s, railroads found that the EMD F3 was not ideal for branchline switching work. There were no end platforms for brakemen and no easy rear view for the engineer. Maintenance inside the F carbody was complicated by the body structure. Although Alco, Baldwin, and Fairbanks-Morse offered road-switcher diesel locomotives as early as 1941, EMD was reluctant to offer one. EMD’s eventual answer was the BL2 — a cross between an F unit and the future GP7s and GP9s. The model did not appear in the EMD catalog until 1948. Both freight and passenger versions were offered. Only 60 units were built, with…

THE POSSIBILITY of a national rail strike, which loomed through much of the fall, was fading as this issue of Trains reached deadline. The U.S. House of Representatives had passed a resolution imposing a labor agreement between railroads and unions. The Senate was likely to follow suit, although its timeline was uncertain. Senators from both parties were expressing reservations. President Joe Biden, who called for Congress to act, was certain to sign the legislation when it reached his desk. Far less certain was the fate of a second resolution to give workers seven days of paid sick leave. That was also passed by the House on Nov. 30, the same day it imposed the terms of a tentative agreement reached by the two sides on Sept. 15. The sick-day provision…

SOME 20 MONTHS AFTER the matter first came to the Surface Transportation Board, Amtrak, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and the Alabama State Port Authority say they have an agreement to allow the launch of passenger service between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala. All details, however — including such basics as when that service might begin — remain unavailable. In a brief statement Nov. 22, the parties said they “collectively reached an agreement to support passenger and freight service in the Gulf Coast Corridor.… Due to the confidential nature of the settlement agreement, the parties are not able to provide further comment on its terms at this time.” The parties asked the STB to hold the matter in abeyance while the deal was completed, saying in a joint filing this would…

RAILROAD HISTORY IS FILLED WITH STORIES of ambitious dreams exemplified by destination names that were reached only in the exaggerated aspirations of the founders. This history is also filled by routes that started in a small locality, wandered over the map through other similar sized communities and arrived at an end point no larger than where it started from, without ever going through a major metropolitan area. In either case, such lines did not survive long or are not in existence today. The Central Indiana & Western Railroad is an exception to both obstacles. The railroad also tells the saga of three generations of railroaders. Not only has the family and the line endured, but they are innovative when it comes to customer service and dedicated to maintaining current business while…

They ruled The Mountain for a dozen years. Tailor-made, powerful, and reliable, the SD40E was a helper engine par excellence. Custom built by Norfolk Southern, these locomotives performed superbly on the former Pennsylvania Railroad main line over the Allegheny Mountains. But like previous generations of helper locomotives, they were silently deposed by a new king of the mountain. The reign of the SD40E helper has ended, but I was able to witness and photograph them during their zenith. The Mountain, as it is often called by the railroaders who work this line, stretches 40 miles from Altoona to Johnstown, Pa., and then on to Pittsburgh. It’s 114 miles of continuous grade that climbs up and over the summit of the Eastern Continental Divide and then across the rugged Allegheny Plateau.…

“MISTAKES ARE INEVITABLE, AND [THE POINT IS THAT] WE LEARN FROM THAT. WE STAND BEHIND OUR EMPLOYEES AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS THEY MAKE.”—BRENDAN ZEIGLER, VICE PRESIDENT, CMO ON NOV. 2, STRASBURG RAIL ROAD’S 4-8-0 No. 475 collided with a piece of track maintenance equipment. On Nov. 7, the locomotive was back in service after an overtime repair effort by the railroad’s mechanical department. The locomotive suffered damage to its smokebox front and door, headlight, and other parts in the collision with a “trackhoe,” or tracked excavator, after running through a misaligned switch onto a spur where the maintenance machine was parked [see “Strasburg Rail Road steam engine hits excavator …,” “Preservation,” January 2023]. No one was injured. The accident was captured by a Virtual Railfan streaming camera; video from that camera was…

IN NOVEMBER, TRAINS PHOTO EXCURSIONS visited the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad for a trip with 2-6-6-2 No. 1309, and the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad to see Soo Line No. 1003. On the WMSR, No. 1309 ran for both daylight and night photo sessions, as seen at left emerging at Brush Tunnel west of Cumberland, Md. The excursion with No. 1003 featured nearly a dozen photo locations through south-central Wisconsin. One site, above, saw No. 1003 and its period freight train passing under the former Chicago & North Western Railway bridge west of Randolph, Wis. The bridge now carries the Union Pacific. Want to join the fun? Watch the pages of Trains for future photo excursions.…

Heading for home The warm autumn afternoon of Oct. 8, 2020, finds a Kansas City Southern grain shuttle at Firth, Neb., on BNSF’s Saint Joseph Subdivision. KCS No. 4623, a GE AC4400CW, is heading the train back to the railroad’s namesake city. Energy BNSF’s Aurora Local, with GP38AC No. 2128 on the point, jumps out from the shadow of a parked coal load on the rolling plains near Tamora, Neb., on Nov. 13, 2018. This is a power buffet with coal, oil, and wind represented. See Z train A pair of BNSF ET44C4s, Nos. 3728 and 3864, parallel Interstate 76 in eastern Colorado as they race along with the daily Z-CHIDEN. It’s July 17, 2021. The blade runner With foreign power up front in the form of Canadian National GE…

UNION PACIFIC HAS LAUNCHED a small pilot program in Kansas that aims to bring more predictability to engineer schedules. The experiment comes as railroads have experienced trouble retaining train crews and hiring new conductors at many locations across their systems — due in part to the unpredictable nature of the jobs. Ongoing crew shortages at UP, BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, and Norfolk Southern have created widespread service problems that have drawn the ire of shippers and the attention of regulators. Eric Gehringer, UP’s executive vice president of operations, says about 40% of the railroad’s train crews — primarily those working in yard and local service — have scheduled jobs. The remaining 60% of UP’s train and engine jobs are unscheduled. To provide more predictability in road freight service, UP is working…

CANADIAN PACIFIC’S EXPERIMENTAL hydrogen fuel-cell locomotive made its maiden run in late October 2022 in Calgary, Alberta, taking the first step in determining whether the technology could one day replace diesel-electric locomotives. “I’ll tell you, the excitement around it, the potential of it, is real,” CEO Keith Creel told the RailTrends conference in November. “And to see it two weeks ago, running down the main line at mainline speed pulling a load behind it, I mean it made the hairs on my arm stand up, because I would have told you two years ago it’s a pipe dream.… Well, it’s not a pipe dream. It’s a reality. Still a lot of work left to do, but it’s super, super exciting.” Home-built unit No. 1001, a converted SD40-2F, is dubbed H2…

IN 1895, a globe-trotting mixed-breed mutt named Owney paid a brief call on Milwaukee. As was his custom, the dog arrived aboard a mail car on one train and departed a few hours later by another. His home was anywhere U.S. mail traveled by railroad — and in the 1890s that was everywhere. “A wanderer upon the face of the globe, if ever there was one, appeared in the office of Chief Clerk Frank P. Smith of the Railway Mail Service this morning,” reported the Milwaukee Journal in its May 11, 1895 issue. “Post Office Owney is a dog, but he is no ordinary dog. He is the property of 7,000 railway clerks.” Seven years earlier, in 1888, Owney was a scruffy stray puppy when he appeared at the Albany,…

THE CENTRAL INDIANA & WESTERN work day gets rolling at the Owens-Illinois Brockway Glass plant in Lapel, Ind. Today, Jan. 6, 2012, ex-Chicago & North Western GP7 No. 4295 is on the point for the run to Anderson, Ind. The first task is switching the glass plant (top). With outbound cars gathered, the train heads out for a straight, flat run to Anderson, Ind., and the interchange with CSX Transportation at their local yard (middle). This is pure, hardworking, grassroots railroading in America’s heartland. Seven photos, Garth McMains Like most towns of any significant size, there has been expansion in the recent decades. As CI&W No. 4295 approaches Anderson, the farm fields give way to the paved streets and new suburban homes. When No. 4295 rumbled through in 2012 it…

DURING SPRING 1979, I was working for the Boston & Maine Railroad as a fireman on commuter trains out of Boston’s South Station. My daily assignment consisted of three trips, all on different main lines and branches. My third trip of the day was from Boston to Attleboro, Mass., a total of 32 miles out and back. My mentor engineer was Oscar A. Spear, an elderly and sometimes unintentionally comical character, who treasured the generation gap between him and those under 35. He pretended to resent the age differences and knew how to use it to elevate himself to an air of superiority. Oscar lived in Wakefield, Mass., adjacent to my hometown of Reading, Mass. This was his second time working for the B&M. THE B&M: ROUND ONE The son…

ERIE LACKAWANNA GE U34CH NO. 3372 is part of a pioneering group of locomotives. Now it is the last of its kind and will be restored to operation by the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey and FMW Solutions. The U34CH represents a passenger train landmark. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, as passenger trains declined, the challenges of old equipment reached Erie Lackawanna commuter trains. The railroad was dealing with fleet of coaches and MU’s dating to the late teens and 1920s. While the EL was the largest commuter line in New Jersey, it was short on cash to modernize its fleet. By the 1970s, the state of New Jersey had committed $90 million to updating the commuter service on several foundering railroads. Rather than refurbishing old…

IT’S NOT THE BIGGEST TOWN IN THE STATE, but it plays host to some good railroad action. The ex-Conrail, now CSX, Bee Line along with the main lines of Norfolk Southern’s New Castle and Frankfort districts meet in Muncie, Ind. The CSX and NS New Castle mains cross just east of Walnut Street. The Frankfort District line splits from the New Castle District northeast of the diamond. A connection west of Walnut Street creates a wye for NS, allowing trains on the Frankfort District to continue south onto the New Castle District. NS handles local switching at East Yard, located about a mile east of the diamond. Rounding out the Muncie rail scene is Progress Rail’s 740,000-square-foot locomotive manufacturing facility. LOCATION: Muncie, located 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis, is a…