Nostalgia & History > A Sunny Sunday October Railfan Outing - 1986

In 1984, The Indiana & Ohio Railroad (I&O) acquired a Conrail line (ex-PRR) running 10 Miles from Monroe via Hageman Jct. to Mason in the Cincinnati, OH area. In 1985, the I&O reopened the 2.3 Mile branch line from Hageman Jct. to Lebanon. They then immediately started a tourist operation on this line with regular weekend excursion trips between Lebanon (base) and Mason (out point) using ex-D&LW MU Cars (pantographs and traction motors removed) and one of their GP7 units for power.
On a sunny Sunday, Oct 19, 1986, I headed up to Cincinnati for a day of railfanning with my friend, Jim Edmonston. He suggested that we check out the I&O tourist train. So we headed that way and found the train in Mason. Jim knew the engineer and arranged a round trip cab ride for us. Space was tight as I&O #51 had dual controls. Afterwards, we chased the train from Mason to Lebanon. Attached are five photos taken that day:
Photo 1 - Passengers boarding at Mason
Photo 2 - Arriving at Lebanon
Photo 3 - After run around at Lebanon
Photo 4 - Boarding passengers at Lebanon Depot
Photo 5 - Departing from Lebanon
Except for this year, the tourist train has operated continuously utilizing the same ex-D&LW MU Cars. However, power now is ex-I&O #55 originally C&O #5704 painted, lettered, and numbered as built.
ALLEN

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/22 13:54 by krm152.

Nice shots and interesting equipment.
Glad to hear it is still operating.
Gary

Nice shots. Hard to beat a cab ride and all these neat older looking locations and equipment
Brian Stevens

Posted from iPhone

You searched out good locations to make these even more interesting..
Bob