Trains of Marion, Ohio; Volume 2.

Описание: Hello everyone! In today's video, I return to Marion, Ohio, for the first time since Summer 2016. You may notice the title of the video with the "Volume 2;" that's because I wanted to replicate the title of my first Marion railfanning video and add "Volume 2" at the end since it was the first time in Marion in nearly three years. Not much has changed in good old Marion, the station is still standing strong and all three lines are still active.

I went up here on an adventure with Cincy Railfanning Productions and gang for our first major adventure of the year up to Marion.
After a seemingly slow start to the day, it quickly became a day full of surprises. In all my years of railfanning, I have never seen a crossing gate malfunction. Well, that ended today. You may notice on the first NS northbound train of the day the crossing gate looking all jacked up. Well, a truck went through the crossing as the gate was going down, thus literally jack-knifing the gate. Fortunately, there was no debris and the gate was not in the way of the train, though it did slow traffic down to 10-15 mph on the line as Norfolk Southern dispatch was forced to send a maintenance guy to replace the gate. Replacing the gate thankfully did not take too long and traffic soon returned to normal about an hour after the accident. But Cincy Railfan Productions and I had a good laugh about it.

As for traffic on the Sandusky District, it was certainly the busiest of the three lines today. It seemed per every one CSX train there were two NS trains (that's usually how it is in Marion on a normal day, but the CSX lines do fluctuate depending on unit-train traffic). Action today mainly consisted of manifest trains, intermodal trains, and the grand prize of the day: NS AC44C6M 4003, one of a select special-painted DC-to-AC power for Norfolk Southern. Coincidentally, NS 4003 happened to be on the last train of the day for the NS Sandusky District, so that's a pretty good way to end the day of railfanning for one of the railroads.

As for CSX, the traffic was slower but the catches were none-the-less amazing. Once again, like 3 years ago, I caught the Conrail caboose for the Marion local on its daily train on the Indianapolis Line Subdivision, still in original paint and in great shape. In addition to the Conrail caboose, we saw a handful of decent trains on the former Conrail route, most notably, a pair of DPU trains and the Spirit of Ravenna (CSX 3440, Spirit of Ravenna, Kentucky). The first DPU train was arguably one of the longest manifest trains I've ever caught (around 180 cars) and it featured numerous boxcars, including an ancient Green Mountain Railroad boxcar, a pair of Southern Pacific boxcars, and others. I've always said manifest trains were the best trains in terms of what you may find, and it seems CSX has begun DPU operations beyond Cincinnati, as displayed on this train (Q364, Avon, Indiana, to Selkirk, NY). A little later after seeing Q364 and some NS traffic, we saw Q365 (Collinwood, Ohio to Avon, Indiana) with the Spirit of Ravenna in the middle. This was interesting as it was the only westbound train we had seen aside from the returning local train on the Indianapolis Line Subdivision. Even more interesting, Q365 made a rather abrupt stop going through the junction, an emergency stop as a matter of fact. Fortunately, there was no serious emergency; dispatch had forgotten to line up the signals properly to allow the train to fully cross the junction and still had signals red on the line west of town. The matter was resolved rather quickly and traffic resumed shortly after. Traffic on this line concluded with a rather odd DPU train, in an autorack no less. CSX placed one engine in front and one in the middle as opposed to just two or three engines up front. While the train was not too unusual with this exception, it still marked the first time I had seen a DPU autorack.

As for the third route at Marion, the Columbus Subdivision, how times have changed for this old route. While this line certainly is not the busiest by any means, traffic has taken a hit in recent years thanks to the decline in coal. We did see a northbound coal train, but the only other traffic noteworthy today was the Willard-to-Columbus manifest train. One can truly emphasize how times have changed on the route. Hopefully times can recover for the old C&O route, but for now it may be on the "cutback" list for CSX. One can only hope traffic can improve quickly.

On the whole, today was once again another great day of railfanning in Marion, and certainly topped the previous adventure to Marion in terms of special units and catches. I hope to be back here in Marion for Conrail days (July 20th for those of you wondering what day that is) and see what other great action will come my way on that day.

As always, thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!

-N&W475