Eastbound
July 25-27, 2013

To get a head start from Chicagoland on Thursday, on Wed. 7-24 afternoon, I drove down to Naperville and dined out with Rick & Jane and overnighted at a Sleep Inn. On Thursday, I transloaded my "stuff" into his minivan and we left his house (where I left my van) around 9 am, aiming to "hit the railroad" around Wellsboro, Ind., and following the old B&O across Indiana to Auburn for overnight. We didn't see any action on CSX (other than an empty oil tank-car train westbound we'd glimpsed going under Hwy 49 as went over) until eastern Indiana, having grabbed lunch to go about 1 pm EDT at the Walkerton Subway, which we ate at Bremen. Finally things broke loose around Milford Junction, where we got w.b. stacker Q147, engines 114-5386, 118 wells, at Gravelton at 253 pm EDT. We checked out the diamond (NS's former NYC Goshen-Marion line, the one PC CTC'ed with PRR signals!) at 310 pm, and knew a CSX eastbound was coming. Going north to get to another road, whoops, there's an NS southbound, slowing to a stop. We went a mile east to an overhead to shoot Q388 on the CSX behind UP 4190/3977, 96 cars (axle count from detector) at 3:24 and zoomed back to Milford Jct to get the NS southbound starting up, as he'd been held for Q388. The NS had 9036/CSX 5146 but we didn't count the cars, prob about 60, general merchandise mixed freight, at 328 pm.

Getting ready to leave the motel in Auburn around 8:30, we heard 2 or 3 CSX trains but of course as we headed to State Line we found a parade of MofW machines on the south track (Track 2), and only one westbound train, which fortunately passed us under high clouds, as in sunlight it would have been terribly backlit. It was K97 with 95 empty oil tank cars, engines 772/561, shot at 8:49 am at MP 120 (from Willard, Ohio, I think).

We knew an eastbound was leaving Garrett, so we took the back roads (gravel, alas) to State Line Road north of the B&O, and approached the two-level crossing from the north, and parked on the side of the road. The tracks are not quite due east-west, so the sun was slightly on our side. After about 20 minutes of waiting, our train came by and we got the best shots possible: Q380, engines 7908/5407, 111 cars, at 9:56 a.m.

While we were waiting for the train, the Ohio mailman came along from the north (the road is paved from the farm just north of CSX south to a paved crossroad, but it's gravel to the north). So what, you say, about the postman? Since that is the state line, each side of the road has a different zip code, so the road requires two postmen. Next we went west to check out the 1-lane overhead (or "rainbow" or "humpback") bridge 1.5 miles to the west, where the alignment is still split. Rumors had circulated that the overhead bridge was gone, or due to come down, but such does not appear to be the case (note the graffiti on the bridge railings), and it would be hard to replace with at-grade crossing(s). During our brief stop here, we saw the Indiana postman on this road. Knowing that no other trains were coming soon, we made our bridge photos and went into Hicksville to catch Ohio Hwy. 18 east, basically our route clear to Fostoria and then Tiffin.

These views look south over the bridge, then west toward Garrett, then east toward Hicksville on the CSX split-alignment main line.

We found a small ex-N&W-NKP depot in Defiance, now the HQ of Pioneer's Napoleon, Defiance & Western, formerly the Maumee & Western. A BN-green NW2 and black Pioneer GP7, 107 and 1603, respectively, were parked there, the NW2's engine running. The time was 10:55 am. We were so glad we had caught that one train at State Line!

After a morning with only two CSX trains, Deshler gave us a jackpot, with 5 trains in less than 40 minutes (!), from 11:50 am to 12:23 pm. We shot most from the railfan park, which has a scanner speaker mounted on a signal bungalow, a campfire pit, a few picnic tables (two under a shelter), a parking lot, a porta-potty across the street that cuts through the wyes south of the east-west main, and no fences! (There ARE "Don't cross the tracks" warning signs.) Here is our first train, 11:50 a.m., w.b. stacks, CSX 88/5437.

We only got 4 trains in Fostoria in about an hour, but it was a nice variety. Our first was at 2:15, w.b. CSX stacks on the B&O at Poplar St., behind CSX 7352/5464.

Although Fostoria was nothing like the old days, in the early 1960s when we'd shoot C&O F7 trios, B&O F units, NYC FA's on a line now gone, and Nickel Plate Geeps, we were satisfied with the short visit. We were also hot and tired, so despite some CSX chatter about trains on the B&O, which we wound up never seeing anyway, even at a distance, we headed on east to Tiffin for Rick to get a shot of the long-preserved brick depot on a long-gone Big Four branch (the B&O depot is gone). It was a tough angle, surrounded by trees and rocks (it's a business), just south of where the diamond had been. We then heard of a w.b. CSX on the scanner, which turned out to be intermodal Q637 behind CSX 7310/5430, at 4:03 p.m., our last train photo of the day. 

Before leaving Upper Sandusky, we went into town for a "clean" shot of that Co-Op Alco, since the sunny side Friday evening was partially blocked. This we accomplished, but from the car, as it was pouring rain! In a way, the weather was good, since we were after mostly static subjects (the depots), many shootable from the car if necessary. On the way into town, we were 1 city block short of a bonus shot of a southbound 60-car CSX vehicle train, but I shot the photo below through the windshield. Power was BNSF 4373, at 9:05 a.m. I then re-shot the Alco, from the van.

In Willard, we found the replica B&O depot, now a museum, in the southeast part of town, then went to the east end of the big CSX yard, where the line to Wheeling, W. Va., now short-lined, diverged. I managed a quick shot from the van, in the rain, of a GP40/slug set, 2347/2500, working the east end of the yard. Behind them is the site of the old roundhouse, where I shot many F units and the like in the 1960s.