I was fortunate to see a quad consist of 2 Union Pacific and 2 Southern Pacific diesels this month going in to the Curtis Bay freight yard in Baltimore Maryland… About once a year I see a UP here… The consist was pulling an long train of coalporters all with UP markings on them which was very out of the ordinary…
Then to follow up it the Tropicana train was overtop of US 1 sitting parked in Elkridge MD on my way in to work about a week later…
That Juice Train is a good catch, if you can catch one.
There is a power plant for BG&E in the area. I dont know if they still barge the coal across or have installed direct rail service now.
I usually can catch the juice train in the afternoons coming over the Anacostia bridge out of DC, just about every day. It has been interesting to watch them slowly go from orange to white. That, or the garbage train.
I think I saw the coalporter train yesterday in the Anacostia yard (I remember S–X). Aluminum with red ends. It caught my attention for 2 reasons. First, CSX usually is dropping and picking up a dog’s breakfast of black hoppers, with markings from everything CSX to NYC and occasionally some rebuilds, like an old Rio Grande hopper. Second, they were new. I couldn’t see the locomotives though. They were either parked further south than I could see (there was a CSX train halfway down the yard blocking the rest, and then a few parked boxcars between them) or up at the other end behind some buildings, but if it had come down from Baltimore then the first case would be correct.
For the past year or so CSX has been having a regular movement of Powder River Basin coal to Curtis Bay for the Bayside facility. Loaded train designations have been U830 and U839. The trains are all UP runthroughs. Frequency averages 2-3 trains per month.