Hartsville,TN was my next stop, and I caught this L&N caboose there. I also got a quick photo of the depot. After leaving Hartsville, I made my way down to Gordonsville and caught this SCL caboose as part of a used car dealership. I got on I-40 after leaving Gordonsville, and went to Cookeville and caught this steam engine and a pair of cabooses.
Tennessee Caboose #9828 was the first caboose. This L&N caboose numbered as #1066 was the second. I also got a photo of the depot in Cookeville. I headed back towards Nashville, and caught one more caboose at Mount Juliet/ After getting this ex-L&N caboose, the rain started to make its way in on the area,and I headed back home.
You are covering a lot of territory and getting a very interesting variety of railfan shots. Keeping this thread to update from time to time is a good idea. Thanks for sharing your fan trips with us. :tb-biggrin:
Glad you like the photos, fitz. "2nd Annual Thanksgiving Day Caboose Hunt - Day 2" Even though I didn't get all the cabooses I'd planned to on Day 1 due to rain, I hadn't planned on returning the next day to get them. I woke early on Friday to discover the 70*F I'd enjoyed in TN the previous day had been replaced by a dusting of snow back home in KY. My original plan was to visit the Henderson Sub again, and hopefully catch some trains with some snow on the ground. By the time I made it to Crofton, nothing was running and the snow was practically gone. So I decided to head south again and get the remaining cabooses, seeing as I had my atlases and directions still sitting in the car. First stop after crossing the state line was Clarksville,TN. I caught a caboose here with RJC 3501 also on display. I would've liked to have gotten some shots with better lighting, but didn't want to walk on RR property or by the factory across the tracks from the display. I took a photo of the depot at Clarksville,TN before leaving.
After leaving Clarksville, I headed west towards the small town of Erin,TN. L&N 6492 was on display in Erin, along with a boxcar in L&N lettering. After leaving Erin, it was on south towards Waverly. The caboose at Waverly is a memorial to the victims of the Waverly Disaster, which claimed 16 lives after a tank car exploded during clean up of a derailment. Marker at the site.
After leaving Waverly, I followed CSXT trackage east, until I reached White Bluff, where I took a detour to get a Family Lines Caboose at Harpeth Valley Road number unknown. After leaving Harpeth Valley, I returned to U.S. 70 and followed the tracks to Pegram, and caught this L&N caboose there. The last caboose I caught was this one, sitting in a park in Bellevue, just near Nashville. I decided to call it a day after this, seeing as there wasn't much railroad activity going on.
Lots of nice caboose photos. :thumbs_up: I see that the non-wide cab engine will soon be extinct or at least very rare.
"Indiana Railroad Santa Train" Got a heads up from a friend that the Indiana Railroad would be running its Santa Train this weekend up in Indiana, with newly painted INRD #9025 on the point. My only day off for the weekend was Friday 12/3, so I figured if I was going to catch the train, I'd have to do something that day. I started off taking the usual back way up to Louisville along CSX, saw R.J. Corman #9002 working Bardstown Junction but didn't take any photos. CSX had some action going on, as did PAL and the LIRC, but no photos. My first stop was for a caboose I'd driven right past on a previous trip a couple weeks ago. This ex-PRR caboose sits along LIRC RoW in Austin,IN. It belongs to a Lions Club. I managed to get a second caboose while traveling through Franklin,IN on my way to Bargersville, where I would meet the INRD Santa Train. This caboose sits across LIRC trackage from a small depot. It is of NYC heritage. I arrived in Bargersville with a good hour to spare before train arrival. In fact, the only people who had beaten me to the tracks were the security & railroad folks. It didn't take long though for a crowd to gather, and six minutes past the scheduled arrival time, INRD #9025 rolled into town with Santa and Mrs. Claus waving to the onlookers from the front of the locomotive: I guess eight reindeer and a sleigh have a pretty good trade-in value if Santa managed to get a SD9043MAC for them!
One last photo, gotta love how I never end up with an even number of pictures... I came home and watched a northbound CSX train in Louisville, along with a NS local working at Floyd Street, meaning I'd seen six different railroads for the day. The northbound I saw later had to stop due to Santa and a Christmas Parade in La Grange,KY. I guess ol' Santa isn't fond of CSX? Not sure where my next roadtrip will take me, I have nothing planned for now. I will probably hang around here, I've seen plenty of interstate the past 3-4 weeks. If you're wondering how I can cover so much ground so quickly, I live in a convenient spot , near an east-west parkway that connects to I-65 on one end(along with a second east-west parkway), and it almost connects to I-64 on the other end. I can be in Cincinnati,Nashville,Indianapolis,Huntington or Paducah in about 3 hours' time or less.
It is former CEFX 109. The Paducah & Louisville has 3 or 4 of the SD90s here in Kentucky, they use three of them on the coal trains between McHenry and Louisville.
The LMS unit is a great catch... I think that may be the last one left in blue. I saw two of them this week (7925 & 7926) and both had been repainted YN3, and both still had their red classification lights!
"Chase the ACe(s)" Ok, so my title for today's trip isn't the best, but my mind is practically blank after being awake nearly 30 hours. A 10 hour work shift followed by another 12 hours of train chasing will do that to you. Anyway... I got a heads up from a friend that a CSX train(K514) with some interesting power would be making its way down through central Kentucky, and this would be worth catching. After getting off work at 4:30am, I decided to skip on the sleep, and I left my house around 7am, much earlier than what I usually do. After leaving Bardstown and making my way to Bardstown Junction, the scanner came to life. Q534 was heading north, but the train I wanted was already at Bardstown Junction! With nowhere near enough light to even try a picture, I was forced to hop on I-65 and race south. After hearing the train on the scanner, I returned the favor to my friend and let him know the train was heading his way. With interstate speed at 70 mph and track speed at 50 mph, I built up a lead over the train and met up with my friend down at Horse Cave,KY, nearly 60 miles from Bardstown Junction. By this point, the sun was starting to rise, and we had enough light to attempt to take pictures. Here's the train: CSX K514-13, with two CSX SD70ACes,(#4842 and #4845), plus SD80MAC #4600 sandwiched between them! Something you don't see every day for certain! After catching K514 and hearing him get clear signals on further south, my friend and I hit the interstate once again to try to get ahead of K514 to get a second round of photos. Our second location was the depot/rail park at Bowling Green,KY. By then the sun had come up and the lighting was great. We managed to beat K514 to the depot by about 5 minutes. At Bowling Green I got better shots of all three units in the consist.
After leaving Bowling Green, my friend and I decided to head down to Franklin,KY, another 20 miles south, to attempt to get K514 yet another time. However Q275 was working in the yard at Bowling Green, and had the main line blocked. This caused K514 to stop and wait nearly 30 minutes. In the mean time, Q574 was coming north, and had to take the siding at Salmons to wait for the two southbounds. We arrived at Salmons moments before Q574 pulled into the siding: This was the first time I'd ever checked this spot out, it's always nice to get trains with "new" scenery. After arriving in Franklin,we heard on the scanner that Q275 finished up in the yard and was given the clear to head south. My friend and I were ready and waiting at Franklin near the huge grain elevator. It wasn't long before Q275 came into view: K514 wasn't far behind, either: After K514 passed it appeared things were going to be quiet for awhile on the railroad. My friend decided to stop and get something to eat in Franklin, while I went on to Bowling Green in search of food. On my way to BG, the dispatcher mentioned a Q578 leaving Nashville, so I knew I had a little time to kill. After getting some food, I decided to check out South Union,KY, where R.J. Corman has a large railroad facility and a small yard. I was hoping his newly purchased units would be sitting around waiting to be photographed, but they were nowhere to be found. Instead, I ran into an eastbound Corman train bound for Bowling Green and Memphis Junction, just a few miles back the way I'd came. I raced them back to Memphis Junction, and with my friend making it back with a couple minutes to spare, we caught this RJC pair pulling some freight cars into CSX's yard:
Photo of the trailing RJC unit: After leaving Memphis Junction, I tried racing through Bowling Green in order to catch five CSX units heading to the north side of town to do some switching at some factories(this is where train J768 originates). I nearly made it... only getting stopped at one final red light in time to see the engines pass behind the intersection. They were going to take an hour at least to work the north side of Bowling Green, so my friend and I went to Oakland,KY, to wait on Q578. The lighting wasn't great for this train, so I'll pass on posting pics for now. My friend had to head back home, and I figured I'd head back north as well. We were hoping to meet a southbound on CSX but had no luck. With daylight fading, my friend gave me another heads up that a southbound was moving through Fort Knox on the PAL. We drove to Cecilia to wait for it, and with darkness just minutes away, I caught this pair preparing to make a pick-up in Cecilia: All in all, it was a fun day... even though I drove more than 200 miles on hardly any sleep. I guess the thought of catching a train kept me going! Not sure when my next roadtrip will be. Winter isn't too cooperative.
