I was out train watchin today with my kids and we went by the debutts yard in chattanooga and saw 4 of these engines does anyone konw why they are in cattanooga? the eingine #'s are 203,204,205,and206.look like SD-7 or SD-9 in red white and black livery looks simeler to southern paint job.
Company was absorbed by NS a few months ago.
FROM THAT DOCUMENT (explains the Southern look) :
BACKGROUND
NSR is a Class I railroad that operates a rail system extending 21,300 miles in the United State and Canada.[3] NS owns 50% of AWW, a Class III railroad that operates an approximately 19-mile rail line in southern Indiana. NS seeks to acquire the remaining 50% of AWW from American Metals and Coal International, Inc. (AMCI). By acquiring the 50% interest in a cash-for-stock transaction, NS would become the sole owner of AWW, and would then consolidate AWW into NS.
In March 1974, the Board’s predecessor, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), granted authority to Southern Railway Co. (Southern), which later became part of NS, to acquire 50% of AWW’s outstanding stock.[4] According to NS, at the time of the ICC decision, Southern was also negotiating with another party to acquire the remaining 50% of AWW and asked the ICC not to limit its approval to the acquisition of the purchased 50%. The ICC declined the re
My old stomping grounds!!
In the 1980’s, the mines referred to as Pike #1 and Pike #2 were owned by Standard of Ohio’s Old Ben Coal Company and then known as Old Ben #1 and #2. At that time and up to its closing Old Ben#1 was the oldest operating surface mine in the country. The seam that was mined out cropped to the east and sloped downward and by my time with the company the operation was blasting out a couple hundred feet of overburden and dragging it out with one of the largest drag line units ever built. One of those with buckets big enough to hold a couple of Greyhound buses. I was in the control cab for about an hour during operations. It was just awesome.
At the time, the mine was getting to the point where the cost of removing the ever deeper overburden combined with a seam that was getting thinner was about to make the mine uneconomical. The company was using a fairly new blasting technique called “cast blasting”, a method of setting the charges in a manner that would blast a substantial portion of the overburden into the mined out area. That reduced the amount of material that had to be dragged out and dumped off the coal to be exposed.
I assume that the price of coal may have risen to the point where the mine might be reopened and turn a profit, but that seems somewhat iffy. It’s is possible that the dragline unit was left idle in place, but it seems to me that after being idle for over ten years, it would take a good chunk of change to put it back in operation.
Back to the trains. Much of the coal from the two mines was sold to Georgia Power and routed over the Southern Ry’s St Louis line that connects with the Rat Hole Division at Danville, KY. If my memory serves me right, that line has a fairly heavy grade coming up off the Ohio River heading east at Louisville. The Southern actually used an early system for distributed power on those trains. Didn’t
OK Jay - I had a hard enough time just finding Oakland and I think I saw Winslow, but where the heck is/was Algiers?
those engines are old southern railway engines sold to aw&w many years ago ( 25 or so ) the NS bought the rest of the railroad 2 years ago and just T&S all the tract to run coal trains from the reopened mines. the employees were givin a chance to hire on the NS. not sure what will happen to those engines.
Maybe Africa? (Some plans were very ambitious.)
Actually, Algiers is 10-12 miles NNE of Oakland City on Indiana Route 356. Looking at the Mapquest aerials it appears that that end of the line is long gone, if it ever actually was built.