Eastern Railroad Discussion > Youngstown line surprise...or how to unclog the Ft. Wayne line.

NS continues to make good on it's decision to ease congestion on the Ft. Wayne line west out of Rochester.  Besides routing some eastbound crude oil and manifest freights via the CF&E (ex-PRR across Indiana and Ohio) and old Bayard branch south out of Alliance, the Youngstown line has had a few additions.  While initially the Conrail split resulted in a significant traffic decrease as NS had to share MGA coal with CSX, more recently cheap natural gas has seen the elimination of much of the remaining coal traffic.  Besides regular Conway to Buffalo 14M/15M and the C29 Haselton yard to Conway local, only a few 580/581 coal/empties move to/from the docks at Ashtabula.  Throw in a few 554/555 trains to/from Avon Lake and that was pretty much it until the Fall meltdown on the Chicago/Ft. Wayne lines.  A few months ago, Conway to Bellevue 15K started taking the Youngstown line north to get on the NKP and go west.  Recently a few crude oil empty trains have done the same.  Here 65R-23 (Reybold, DE-Chicago/BNSF) rolls north at Edinburg, PA on Mar23 2015.  Hopefully more to come.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/15 18:19 by PCTZ.

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Very nice catch. You can also still occasionally see 524/525 and 532/533, as well as the stone trains 72N/72R/72X south and 73N/73R/73X north.

Joe Tarantine

fatnrat Wrote:
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> Very nice catch. You can also still occasionally
> see 524/525 and 532/533, as well as the stone
> trains 72N/72R/72X south and 73N/73R/73X north.
>
> Joe Tarantine


Ah yes, forgot about those.  Thanks for updating that Joe.

Who knew the oil trains would revive some lines that were barely kicking? I wish the B&O St. Louis Division (CSX Indiana Sub) would find itself in the path of unexpected traffic.

PCTZ Wrote:
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> fatnrat Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Very nice catch. You can also still
> occasionally
> > see 524/525 and 532/533, as well as the stone
> > trains 72N/72R/72X south and 73N/73R/73X north.
> >
> > Joe Tarantine
>
>
> Ah yes, forgot about those.  Thanks for updating
> that Joe.

No problem Rich!

Joe Tarantine

If CSX would rebuild the Ohio Division across Southern Ohio, they could work out a direct connection with UP and BNSF to move some of the priority traffic from Kansas City to a shorter, more direct route to the east coast to avoid some of the Chicago congestion.

Not even possible since most of the RofW is now used for other things...such as highways....

CG Tower


cfd1233 Wrote:
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> If CSX would rebuild the Ohio Division across
> Southern Ohio, they could work out a direct
> connection with UP and BNSF to move some of the
> priority traffic from Kansas City to a shorter,
> more direct route to the east coast to avoid some
> of the Chicago congestion.