Eastern Railroad Discussion > Coaltrains in the middle of "Gas Plant Land"

Eastern Ohio is continuing to be engulfed with natural gas/fracking plants... but that's not a bad thing. The two regional railroads of Eastern Ohio, the Wheeling & Lake Erie and the Ohio Central, have had huge traffic increases in the last year thanks to these new plants. The new plant in Scio is served by Ohio Central, and the plant in Hopedale (Hanna) is served by the W&LE. While the plants have caused rail traffic to nearly double on the regionals, they aren't even at full capacity yet. The plants are expected to have an output of 100+ cars a day, sometime within the next two years. Even NS is sticking its fingers into the Scio plant... in the near future there should be unit NS gas trains going from Scio to the Carmen Ohi-Rail interchange, and take the Ohi-Rail line up to Minerva and Bayard, and ultimately end up on the NS Cleveland line. I'm not sure how soon this will happen but it will involve rebuilding the entire Ohi-Rail line from Carmen to Minerva.

On October 29th, I was able to see a lot of the new action in the Scio/Cadiz area. Ohio Central is in the process of rebuilding nearly all of their Cadiz branch to serve a new gas plant being built just outside of Cadiz. I've attached two pictures of the construction of the plant, which can easily be seen from Ohio Route 9. Most of the plant is hidden off in the distance. The Cadiz branch is having welded rail installed from Cadiz Jct all the way to the new plant. I'm not sure how much traffic this plant will have, but there appears to be several tankcar loading tracks being built.

But even though there is all this new gas traffic, the only Ohio Central trains I caught on the evening of the 29th were coaltrains. However I probably would have seen a couple of natural gas tankcar trains if I had stayed in the area the whole day. After checking out the Cadiz plant construction, I was on my way west when the OHCR CAD-1 empty coaltrain appeared. This particular coaltrain loads at a coal loadout a couple miles north of Cadiz on the Cadiz branch, and goes west to the powerplant in Conesville. I was surprised to see it running considering all the construction. Here is the CAD-1 going east through Jewett, just a few miles form the Cadiz branch. It had SD40-2's 4023 and 3308 on the front end, and SD40-2 3329 on the rear to lead the 52 car empty train down the Cadiz branch.

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More pictures of the OHCR CAD-1... the train got to Cadiz Jct right around dusk. I 've attached a picture of the train approaching the junction and a picture of the train passing what appears to be an old PRR freight depot. The last picture shows 3329 starting the train down the Cadiz branch at Cadiz Jct. You can see that they've buried new welded rail into the crossing for future installation.

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More pictures of the CAD-1 working its way down the branch. The first picture shows the train just south of Cadiz Jct. They had to line the Cadiz Jct switch normal once they cleared it because an eastbound empty NS coaltrain would be in the area soon. The middle picture is the train going down a steep grade in Pittsburgh Jct. The W&LE Rook Sub's Hanna tunnel is underneath this hill, and the new Hanna gas plant is just out of frame to the right. And the last picture is a going away shot of the 4023 and 3308 holding back the train going down the hill out of Pittsburgh Jct. It was almost to dark for decent pictures so the chase of the CAD-1 ended here. But that wouldn't be the last coaltrain of the day...

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And lastly, that NS empty coaltrain. It was much farther away than expected. After going west all the way to Newcomerstown with no luck finding it, NS 1079 could finally be heard on the scanner calling all east of Morgan Run (Coshocton). Clearly my skills as a nighttime photographer aren't that good, but the picture is good enough to show what I was looking for...NS 1079 and 1022 pulling about 100 empty coalcars east through Newcomerstown. I fired a couple 'warning' flashes before the train got to me, and it looks like the conductor ducked to get out of the flash. The coaltrain was rerouted onto the OHCR because of congestion on the NS Fort Wayne and Cleveland lines.

There were a couple W&LE trains that made appearances during the day as well. Here is train 212 in Hopedale with new W&LE units 6967 and 7360 for power, and W&LE train 218 in Jewett with veteran units 3067 and 4000 for power.

Thanks for looking.
Matt.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/14 17:19 by Poker2662.

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Nice series of pictures, especially of that new construction. Similar to the Mark West Liberty's Houston rail yard in Westland, PA. close to where I live.
John

Glad to see East-central and Southern Ohio receiving a much needed economic boost.

I left this area 35 years ago, mostly because jobs were downright scarce. Some counties in
this area had double or near double-digit unemployment for decades. Now when I go visiting
friends or relatives there, I see oil service trucks, construction equipment, and people seemingly
working in every other field.

Regarding the track into Minerva, looks like this was NYC trackage at one time.

Nice documentation. Thanks for posting.

GOOD stuff...!!! Thanks for sharing.