Railroad wise, how fortunate we are here in Central Indiana. This weekend I went to Cleveland Ohio and back. Going, I went via Dayton and Columbus and up and returning, I came down to Mansfield and across US30 to I-69 and down. In all that time, I never even heard a train and saw only one parked as I approached Indiana on my return.
I wasn’t back home 15 minutes when a train went by my house, the first of several over the next hour. Even as I type this, I hear the third in the past hour this morning. And now hear, “Three Point applied” on my scanner.
Here in central Indiana we can still see and hear trains. How sad for our hobby in all of those areas where there are no more trains to be heard and seen.
“505, South Anderson” says the conductor of the train that just came by… and another day has begun.
Amen to that! And… How very important that our hobby continue to relive that time when trains rumbled past our towns and cities daily or even hourly. Last weekend during my presentation on model railroading to the Webelos, the question came up of why are trains better than other kinds of modeling. I just said that there is just something about watching a loco wiith 40 or 50 cars behind it snaking through the landscape. Immediately two parents said, “oh Yehhhhh!” I wish I could have gotten a photo of the look of wonder on several kids faces as they contemplated the scene. We can still relive those days! Be sure to share it.
This is so kool.I live in Central Point ,Oregon ,about two blocks from the tracks of the CORP (the old SP )the trains come by some times four times a day or more,the over the road engines are usely four GP-38’s, most from HLCX .(leased I guess) The local switcher is an GP-38 also, and I hear him every day working at the grange an mills across the hi-way from here.if I want to watch him I have a lot of places picked out to watch from.Or just go down to the maintance shop and see what is going on and talk to the maintance crew,some times they have an engine in working on it.I hav’nt got the freq for the engines yet,so don’t have them on my scaner .Or I can go out to White City and watch the White City Transit switch the mills out there(SW-1500 and a GE 800)LIFE IS GOOD HERE!!!
For me, all of the tracks in my area have been pulled up and the roadbed turned into what the County lovingly calls “Rails to Trails”. Which means that property owners don’t get their grandfather’s property back, the County paves it over and turns it into a trail for walkers, cyclists, etc.
That’s all well and good. However, there is still ONE railroad spur about a mile from my house. It is a very old chunk of rail and seldom is used. Last night, about 9:30pm, I was on the porch cooling off from yard work, when I hear this diesel horn! Over the next ten minutes, following horn blast after horn blast I listened as the engine made it’s way around the bend in headed off towards Yelm, tooting a warning at every road crossing. This is such an old track, all the automated gates are long gone and folks just scream over the tracks without looking. I thought about jumping in the truck and going to watch the engine cross over Highway 507, but my chilled lemonade kept my in my seat. Listening was enough for me.[:D]
I live in Oxford and work in Hamilton, just North of Cincy, and we must get 20 to 25 trains a day (CSX and NS) thru town during the week, but the weekends are almost dead.
Roger,When you went through Mansfield you was 26 miles from Bucyrus…Yesterday NS put on a rather good show on the Sandusky line.
Sadly Mansfield is served by the Ashland Railway and NS.However,NS only runs about 12-14 trains a day through Mansfield and sadly Crestline is no longer a hot spot since the split up of CR… [:(]
If you would like to railfan in Bucyrus,Belllevue,Fostoria,Marion or Willard e-mail or pm me and we will get together and I will show you some railroad action. [:D]
Oh, yes, quite true. But when you drive by two large grain elevators that look like they’re doing well and you can see where the tracks were… well, that leaves me a little bit cold especially when the highways are clogged with 18 wheelers. Oh, well. [:(]
The real thing tho is that there are far less tracks today than there were. That means that younger people may have no contact with trains at all and it follows that we will have to work harder to promote our hobby, much harder in some cases.
Roger,I understand what you are saying.I know of 2 large grain elevators that was cut off from rail service when a nearly useless branch was abandon…Then you have industries and grain elevators to drop rail service-there’s usually Penn-Central horror story behind that decision.
As far as promoting to the hobby to the younger crowd good luck…You see I found in the 54 years I been in the hobby we can lead a kid to trains but,we sure enough can’t make model railroaders out of 'em if they don’t become interested.I don’t care if there is a train going by every 5 minutes the kid has to become interested first and there lays the true problem.