June 4, 2020 – Paducah and Louisville Railway (PAL) 3800, 2100 and 2121 lead Scotty’s Rock train across the trestle at Big Clifty, Kentucky as they head north to their rock yard in Vine Grove, Ky with loaded rock cars. This is the highest trestle on the PAL railway.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Irex 11mm, f/22, 1/800sec, 5 stops underexposed (exposed for the highlights so the sun wouldn’t blow out completely), ISO 100. The smaller f/stop also gives the nice starburst on the sun!
May 27, 2020 – Not a real clear shot of it, but today I found White Pass 3003, one of six new locomotives for the White Pass & Yukon Route, attached to an old switcher at National Railway Equipment Company in Mount Vernon, Ill.
According to CBCNEWS, the Scenic railway out of Skagway, Alaska, is replacing their 50-year-old locomotives with these new units.
“The White Pass & Yukon Route scenic railway runs every summer on the 110-kilometre historic route between Skagway and Carcross, Yukon.
The new locomotives will replace the railway’s aging fleet of locomotives from the 1960s. They’re built by National Railway Equipment Company in Mount Vernon, Ill.”
I’d love to catch this power move when it happens, so if anyone knows when it’ll happen I’d love a heads up!
For me the old switcher is just as interesting as it has, what appears to be, Chinese writing on the voltage plate under the right light. Anyone know anything about it? I wasn’t able to get a good side shot of it while I was there, so I don’t have a number.
May 8, 2020 – The late afternoon sunlight rakes across sand tower area at MG Rail (MGRI) as locomotive 2002 sits at their engine house in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
The shortline is owned and operated by Consolidated Grain and Barge (CG&B). It operates within the Clark Maritime Center, near Jeffersonville, Indiana. MGRI switches out several industries within the Maritime center and stages them at connections to CSX and Louisville & Indiana.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 @340mm, f/7.6, 1/1600 sec at ISO 720.
May 15, 2020 – The crew of West Tennessee Railroad (WTNN) Fulton Turn (T92) sit on a rise at as it waits for permission to cross the WTNN/CSX Diamond southbound at Milan, Tennessee with 5543 and 4071 as power.
According to their website: The West Tennessee Railroad began in 1984 on a portion of the former Mobile & Ohio Railroad main line between Jackson and Kenton, Tennessee. In 2001, the WTNN expanded operations, acquiring operating rights over the former ICG line between Corinth, Mississippi and Fulton, Kentucky.
WTNN operates on a daily basis and has interchanges with CSX, KCS, NS, and CN. Car storage and transloading services are provided in several convenient areas along the WTNN line.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 lens @ 370mm, 1/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 280.
May 13, 2020 – Paducah and Louisville Railway 1998, University of Kentucky engine, leads a Scotty’s Rock train on LV1, with PAL 2100 and 2121 trailing, as it heads south through Central City, Kentucky.
Tech Info:Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 @ 210mm, 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 220.
May 13, 2020 – For me, some photos just need to be black and white like this one of Paducah and Louisville Railway 1998, University of Kentucky engine, as it leads a Scotty’s Rock train through a tunnel of trees, as it approaches the Ky 70 crossing just south of Madisonville, Ky.
Tech Info:Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 @ 350mm, 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 350.
May 15, 2020 – Today I spent trackside with fellow railfan Cooper Smith, where he navigated me through some of his favorite spots in west Tennessee. I’d been here before back on New Years Day, but only caught 1 train moving on the trip. Today was a lot different as just about everywhere we went, a train showed up shortly after we got there!
One of our goals was to catch the West Tennessee Railroad (WTNN) working somewhere in the area and we found their Fulton Turn (T92) crossing the WTNN/CSX Diamond at Milan, Tennessee as 5543 and 4071 lead the way south back to their yard at Jackson, TN past the old diamond sitting in the grass. A good day trackside and a big shout out to those that provided train updates and locations!
According to their website: The West Tennessee Railroad began in 1984 on a portion of the former Mobile & Ohio Railroad main line between Jackson and Kenton, Tennessee. In 2001, the WTNN expanded operations, acquiring operating rights over the former ICG line between Corinth, Mississippi and Fulton, Kentucky.
WTNN operates on a daily basis and has interchanges with CSX, KCS, NS, and CN. Car storage and transloading services are provided in several convenient areas along the WTNN line.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Irex 11mm lens, 1/800 sec, f/11, ISO 125.
May 13, 2020 – Paducah and Louisville Railway 1998, University of Kentucky engine, leads a Scotty’s Rock train as it rounds a curve in the valley south of Caneyville, Ky on LV1 with PAL 2100 and 2121 trailing, bound for Madisonville, Ky
Tech Info:Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 @ 600mm, 1/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 560.
May 13, 2020 – Paducah and Louisville Railway (PAL) 1998, University of Kentucky engine, leads a Scotty’s Rock train south on LV1 with PAL 2100 and 2121 trailing.
The pull at this point is a hard one as they work upgrade out of Litchfield, Kentucky after picking a load of rock cars from Scotty’s Contracting & Stone at Litchfield, bound for their Madisonville operation.
Tech Info: Fuji XT-1, RAW, Fuji 18-55mm @ 18mm, 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250.
May 8, 2020 – Louisville and Indiana Railroad Honoring Our Veterans units 3001 & 3002 bask in the late evening light outside the shops at Jeffersonville, Indiana.
According to Wikipedia and the Internet: The Louisville and Indiana Railroad is a Class III railroad that operates freight service between Indianapolis, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, with a major yard and maintenance shop in Jeffersonville, Indiana. It is owned by Anacostia Rail Holdings. The 106-mile line was purchased from Conrail in March 1994.
The logo on the units were designed by Tyler Hardin and depicts silhouettes of three soldiers from different eras against a backdrop of the American flag. The design, framed by the LIRC keystone, includes five stars for the branches of the service and the legend “Honoring Our Veterans.” A soldier in the center wears a contemporary helmet, flanked by a pair of soldiers, one wearing a World War I-era “Doughboy” helmet and the other an M1 helmet from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
The locomotives are 3,000 h.p. SD40-2 units numbered 3001 and 3002, and were repainted during a recent upgrade at Metro East Industries Inc. in Fairview Heights, Ill., a suburb of St. Louis. The units are leased from CIT Rail.
May 8, 2020 – The late afternoon sunlight rakes across the shop area at MG Rail (MGRI) as locomotives 2002, 2001 and 700 sit next to their engine house in Jeffersonville, Indiana. I had never heard of this shortline, but thankfully good friend Ryan Scott of SteelRails has and navigated us to MG’s yard just before crews took two of the engines out of the yard with loaded hoppers for interchange work.
The shortline is owned and operated by Consolidated Grain and Barge (CG&B). It operates within the Clark Maritime Center, near Jeffersonville, Indiana. MGRI switches out several industries within the Maritime center and stages them at connections to CSX and Louisville & Indiana.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Sigma 150-600 @210mm, f/1.7, 1/1600 sec at ISO 900.
May 8, 2020 – The power from RJ Corman’s empty sand train Z543-07 with GMTX 9059 (SD60) leading, RJC 5373 and 5409 trailing, gets tied down at Nugent Sand Company at Louisville, Kentucky after making a run to Lexington with a loaded train for central Kentucky customers. Normally this train runs during the early morning darkness, but lately it has been making daylight runs on Fridays.
Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Irex 11mm, F/11, 1/800 sec, ISO 320.
May 8, 2020 – RJ Corman’s empty sand train Z543-07 heads north with GMTX 9059 (SD60) leading as it passes through the area of Louisville, Kentucky known as Butchertown. It was returning to Nugent Sand Company for another load of sand for Lexington, Ky and a variety of central Kentucky customers. Normally this train runs during the early morning darkness, but lately it has been making daylight runs on Fridays.
The Nugent Sand Co. takes a million tons of sand out of the Ohio River each year. Some 400,000 to 600,000 tons of that has been moved by R.J. Corman into the Lexington and surrounding markets each year since the two companies partnered in 2005.
GMTX 9059 was originally built in 1986 as an EMD lease/demo unit and most recently It was running on the New York and Susquehanna & Western Railway (NYSW), Headquartered in Cooperstown, New York, where it was painted in their scheme. It was leased to them by GMTX and is now it is being run on RJC after NYSW decided it did not meet NYSW standards. RJC has a contract with GMTX to do testing and maintenance on their locomotives and are doing so with this unit currently.
February 22, 2020 – Indiana Harbor Belt (IHB) 2920 (SD20 backs into the Blue Island Rail Yard at Riverdale, Illinois, past the old control tower, as it works on building a train. From what I find online the unit was built in 1959 and was rebuilt by Illinois Central in 1980 from IC 2010. Then it went to NRE in 2/95, and was leased to IHB 9/96, before being purchased by IHB 6/2007.
According to the IHB Website: The Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad is the largest switch carrier in the U.S. with 54 miles of mainline track (24 miles of which is double main track) and 266 miles of additional yard and siding track.
The IHB provides a wide variety of services, including industrial switching with 160 customers, generating 170,000 carloads of business annually. The IHB interchanges daily with 16 other rail carriers in Chicago. A growing fleet of approximately 1,400 freight cars is geared predominately to the steel industry. The industrial traffic base includes 4 of the 5 largest steel producers in the U.S. and a large aluminum processor, oil refineries, corn millers, grain elevators, chemical plants, warehouses, lumber transloading, and bulk transfer operations. IHB’s industrial traffic consists of 38% primary metals, 12% chemicals & petroleum products, 11% food products, 8% scrap iron, 7% coal & coke, 6% whole grain, as well as a variety of other products including lumber, paper, and aggregates. The IHB also operates as an intermediate switch carrier between the 12 trunk-line railroads for traffic interchanged between them in Chicago, generating an additional 475,000 revenue cars.
The IHB main line circles Chicago from near O’Hare to Northwest Indiana and roughly parallels Interstate 294 (Tri-state Expressway) and I-80/94. Its primary yard, Blue Island (a 44 class track hump yard) at Riverdale, IL lies in about the center of the railroad. Other major yards includes Gibson (in Hammond, IN) which only classifies cars of new autos and Michigan Avenue Yard (in East Chicago) which serves the extensive steel plants which accounts for IHB’s primary business. From East Chicago, the IHB operates east for an additional 16 miles on trackage rights to access Burns Harbor, IN and Portage, IN, which includes Indiana’s International Port.
September 29, 2010 – Blast From The Past – Paducah and Louisville Railway locomotives, 2105, 2102, 3804, 3808, 8507 lead a northbound loaded Louisville Gas & Electric coal train across the trestle at Big Clifty, Kentucky against the setting sun. It also had PAL 2120, 2117 and 1999 bringing up the rear as DPUs.
October 22, 2007 – Paducah and Louisville Railway 2111 leads the way as it exits the tunnel at Dawson Springs, Ky headed southbound towards Paducah.
February 22, 2020 – The afternoon Iowa Interstate local, with unit 502, backs through Blue Island Junction at Blue Island, Illinois, as they head to CSX Barr Yard to do interchange work.
February 22, 2020 – Iowa Interstate units 517 & 512 head along track nine at Blue Island Junction at Blue Island, Illinois, as they run engine light after making a drop-off at CSX’s Barr Yard.
February 22, 2020 – Indiana Harbor Belt 4015 and 4017 approach the diamond at Dolton, Illinois on track two as they head west on the Indiana Harbor Belt line where they cross over the Union Pacific Villa Grove Subdivision headed back toward their Blue Island yard.
February 22, 2020 – Iowa Interstate units 512 & 517 cross over the CSX Elsdon Subdivision as it runs engine light along the Metra Joliet Sub District at Blue Island, Illinois.
February 22, 2020 – Indiana Harbor Belt 2920 backs into the Blue Island Rail Yard at Riverdale, IL as IHB 2160 works it’s own job during a cold winters morning as IHB caboose 54 sits waiting to be the shoving platform on its next assignment.
According to the IHB Website: The Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad is the largest switch carrier in the U.S. with 54 miles of mainline track (24 miles of which i… See More