Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Wordless Wednesday #65

The view from my current work's parking lot, this one's for you Jim!

On a foggy morning train Z640-10 with W&LE SD40-3 6385 takes the morning stone run over the CSX Akron mainline to a gravel facility near the old Firestone Tire plant. 10-10-14 Akron, OH, Chris Ellis photo

4 comments:

  1. WOW! Thanks Chris ... fog or no fog this a great shot! I had wondered what that train symbol was ... mucho thanks!
    Jim Talbott
    Canton, MI

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  2. I've been sitting behind the old Inventor's Hall of Fame and I've noticed between 2pm and 10pm there isn't a whole lot of traffic on the CSX mainline. A couple autorack trains, a couple coke trains, a couple manifest, and a local is about it. I've never seen WLE traffic. Of course I'm not there for 8 hours solid but one Sunday I sat there about 2 hours and nothing moved. Not sure what the peak hours are?

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    Replies
    1. I typically work 6am-2pm and I know there can be quite a bit of traffic in those early morning hours. Then around 9-10 the MoW people start asking the CSX I/O(Indiana/Ohio) Dispatcher for time to inspect various areas. So there can be hours of nothing like you experienced. One train every 30 minutes or used to be typical depending on the economy. The Wheeling/ABC runs usually happen before 10am but once it warms up and the stone traffic increases, you might see Wheeling action returning to Summit St with a shoving move or sometimes combined with the ABC SW-1500 switcher. When I would work a 2-10pm shift there seemed to be a small "dinner" rush sometimes around 5-7pm.

      The CSX local power is neat right now because they are using an old GP-30 that was rebuilt into a slug. Nice to still see 50 year old engines remaining useful.

      My Bearcat scanner doesn't work to well anymore, so I now use a scanner app on my iPhone called Scanner Radio Deluxe. Someone in Medina/Wayne county has a tremendous antenna with an internet stream that allows me to listen into a lot of the regional train action.

      I can hear everything from Exchange St and west to Lodi/Creston on the CSX Chicago main, Almost everything on the W&LE in the area, sometimes even trains leaving Bellevue crackle in. There's also a lot of chatter on the Norfolk Southern Ft. Wayne line on the Alliance-Orrville section as well. CSX radio seems to take priority on this scanner stream.

      I recommend checking it out, look for "Wayne and Medina Counties CSX". I'm sure there is a comparable app on Google Play for Android as well.

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