Some times if you don’t happen to know what railroad track you are fanning near, it is pretty darned hard to determine just from the rolling stock whose property you are near. Take, for instance, BNSF train BRCGAL (Belt Railway of Chicago to Galesburg) at Eola Yard today…he had six units (interesting in and of itself these days) and here is the lashup (front to back):
BNSF Dash 9-44CW #4325 (looked like this one has bad a turbo or stack fire, scorched sides)
BNSF Dash 9-44CW #4855
NS ES40-DC #7516
NS D8-40C (ex-CR still in blue) #8310 (ditto on evidence of turbo or stack fire)
CSX C40-8W #7796
BNSF GP-38 #2115
This made for a rather unusual BRCGAL and an interesting time at Eola Yard today (Amtrak 4 and 5 met at the yard office crossover), AND to top it all off it seems we have a new Yard-mistress (whoops, I mean Yardmaster) who has just completed her training and she seems to be doing a good job. Too hot to spend more than about two hours at Eola, but there will be other days.
With trackage rights, leasers, and run-though power, methinks that if you plopped a railfan down in an otherwise unrecognizable place, he (or she) might just have a problem telling you exactly who does own the rails in a lot of places.
The tracks out back are owned by CSX, but on a lot of days you’d think it was UP with a majority of the trains coming through with UP power at times. We also see some from bout every class 1 around still in old paint, SP, IC, SF, WC.
Consider the neighborhood in which I grew up. I’ll use the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Tracks are owned by Chicago & Western Indiana: used by CWI co-owners EL and Monon, C&O has trackage rights over CWI/EL to Griffith, BRC delivers transfers to Burnham and loads to the Ford assembly plant on trackage rights, EJ&E on trackage rights from State Line to reach the US Steel warehouse and occasionally to 98th Street, EL also has runthroughs with RI and BN.
The CN line through Michigan has had so many run-through and newly delivered units that if someone watches long enough they will see locomotives from BNSF, CSX, CP, CEFX, FURX, GATX, HATX, IC, KCS, MRL, NS, UP, plus other roads in mixed consists or matching pairs.
Sure CN Locos are frequent, but pulling less than half the trains.
I see lots of WC, GTW, IC, UP, NS, and BNSF here in Oshkosh. Yeah they are on CN and mostly it’s CN engines but variety is neat to see. I’d love to see some KCS, SP, CP, or anything that’s ‘exotic’ to my area.