The Great Locomotive Chase

railohio

Active Member
The day started out innocently enough. I was to meet up with a few friends in Glendale, Ohio to shoot the track and signal work on the Toledo Sub and maybe shoot a few reroutes on the I&O. Well, we soon found out that those plans were in vain. All of the reroutes were running overnight and the track work was near completion, limiting what we could shoot.

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While we were figguring out our next plan of attack, along came the Tropicana Juice Train, or a reasonable imposter. These cars are run on the rear of a Florida to Cincinnati intermodal train and then taken in a dedicated transfer run to the Tropicana facility north of Cincy. Here it is shown northbound passing Glendale.

Our final decision is to chase an eastbound out of Cincinnati on the old C&O in Kentucky. We got a heads-up from a friend that this train had an '80MAC in the consist; we did not know if it was leading, but to us it was worth finding out. Our plan is to chase him from Cincy all the way to Huntington, West Virginia. Unfortunately, however, even the best laid plans don't always work out...

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The first shot of the day. Our train passes the C&O style signals in Melbourne, Kentucky.

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Our train passes the west end of the siding at New Richmond Station, Kentucky.

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Our prey passes downtown Augusta, Kentucky.

After passing Augusta, the train trips the detector just east of town. Unfortunately, the car was halfway back in the train, and there was no way for us to give the conductor a ride back. We decide to let them resolve the situation and move onto our next photo location in Maysville. We figgure the train will be along soon enough...

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After waiting over an hour on the Ohio River bridge we give up on shooting our prey and settle for shots of this lowly hi-railer along the river...

Turns out the train had set out the defect car in the Maysville yard as well as perform some regular swapping of blocks there. By the time the train got to downtown Maysville, the light had shifted enough to warrant not taking the shot.

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We decided to hang out in Maysville a bit and see what westbounds would come. Here we see two which did not make the grade for chasing. The third, however, became our bait for the trip home...

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This was our victim for the trip home, and this also happened to be the last shot we got of it, before the sun faded over the Kentucky hills...
 

babydot94513

Member in training
Nice work and I like to read train-chase stories. Anyone can just sit trackside and photo what flys by but it takes planning to pull off a successful chase.
 

brakie

Active Member
Brian,The last 14 months I worked on the Chessie( by then the CSX) was on the Cincinnati Div. I made many trips through those towns.I recall one time we had to drop some cars at Maysville and decided to eat dinner at the resturant that was located in the old station(is it still there?).Amtrak#51 stops at Maysville or use to. At that crossing at Augusta we hit a guy that walked around the gates...He was lucky the engine just clipped him...Did you stop at the yards at Russell or did you make it that far?

The last trip I made back to Russell was on a empty hopper train pulled by 4 GP9s( all still in C&O!!) heading for the dead line at Russell...The 765 was running behind us for the yearly "New River Train"...We got as far as Limeville and had to wait for a clear yard track.The 765 ran around us at speed as she was heading for the Huntington yards and would use a run through track at Russell..I would have given a weeks pay to have been track side durning that move with a camera.My only thoughts was antiques passing from the past glory days of railroading...Great pictures BTW!
 
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