Eastern Railroad Discussion > The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!

Date: 04/23/18 22:05
The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

Today in Western Upstate New York was beautiful, with temperatures just passing 70 with sunny skies and a gentle breeze... After what's seemed like the longest winter ever (it was snowing just last week!), it was a nice change... With the day off from work, I ventured out to see what CSX and NS were running... Today I was able to reacquaint myself with a group of locomotives I haven't seen much of lately: ex-Conrail C40-8Ws...

Now I know many people don't have nice things to say about these diesels... I've heard crews complain that the seats are uncomfortable, the desktop controls aren't well-liked, and evidently CR beat the snot out of them, so these days as they approach 30 years of age, they aren't in the best shape... Fans also have their complaints... With so many of them on Conrail back in the day (blue wide-nose Dash-8s included numbers 6050-6285 plus LMS units 700-739, for a total of 276), they were rather common... To a lot of other enthusiasts, they're "just another wide-nose GE unit"...

But I was born in November of 1990, right around the time the first order for 50 was being completed... The first of the Quality units in the 6100s came around in 1991, with the final units being delivered in 1994... There were other CR units around at the time, to be sure, including SD40-2s, SD50s, B23-7s, SD60Ms and Is, and other types, but through my young eyes, these units were essentially the face of Conrail... No other unit that I'm aware of shares their unique arrangement of headlights above and number boards notched in the nose, with those classic red marker lights mounted just above these... Identifying these units in the dark especially was very easy...

When the Conrail split became a reality in 1999, I was only 8 years old, and didn't fully grasp what was happening... I first became aware of a change when my beloved C40-8Ws started appearing with bizarre white number patches and 8300-series numbers, since NS began renumbering their units first... Since the split, I got to still enjoy seeing 7300s on CSX and the occasional 8300/8400 on NS... But the 7300s disappeared from CSX recently; the last one I saw was #7370 in December of 2016, and I didn't see any at all through 2017... Although the NS 8300s/8400s kept active and still are, I never thought I'd see the 7300s again...

Thankfully (for the fans like me, at least), 2018 is bringing high traffic levels on some roads, and the 7300s are being reborn as leasers... In January I managed to find GECX #7388, one of the many that CN is leasing, trailing on a train on the NS Southern Tier... Flash forward to April 23, 2018, and I managed to see three 7300s in one day, plus two of the NS 8300s as well...

All right, enough text, now for the shots...

Photos #1 and #2 are of CSX train Q020 cruising past the classic NYC stone milepost at mile 403 in Batavia, NY... Power includes CSXT #805 and NS #8351, a surprise visitor on a train that doesn't usually have foreign power... NS #8351 (ex-CR #6112) is at the same time a foreign unit and running on home rails...

Photo #3 is of what I believe is CSX train Q264 coming past Old Broadway, entering Frontier Yard in Buffalo, NY...

More on the way...

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Quote ]

Date: 04/23/18 22:08
Re: The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

Photos 4-6 depict NS train 36T, our next catch, rolling by milepost SR411.5 in Lancaster, NY... With an EMD leader (something that's hard to find on CSX these days) in the form of almost-heritage-unit SD70ACe #1064, it brought with it two smoking and snorting 7300s, including GECX numbers 7324 and 7301 (former CR numbers 6115 and 6052, respectively)... Whoever lit the marker lights on #7324, may I say thank you!

The view is from the Cemetery Road overpass, which goes over both the Southern Tier main and parallel Erie Street (now where do you suppose that name came from?)

More to come...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/18 22:23 by MC6853.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Quote ]

Date: 04/23/18 22:11
Re: The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

Photo 7 shows 36T near the Harlow Road crossing east of Alden, waiting in the siding for westbound 23K, which has the green signal...

Photo 8 shows a bit of disappointment... I go to the Southern Tier to get away from blue GEVOs, and what should be leading 23K past the SR401 milepost but CSXT #5209? The full consist includes the #5209, NS #9620, CN #3080, and another ex-CR Dash-8 in the form of NS #8326 (ex-CR #6070; photo 9)...

More to come...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/18 22:24 by MC6853.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Quote ]

Date: 04/23/18 22:13
Re: The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

Photos 10-12 show 36T on the move again cruising out of the Alden siding... I also caught 36T at Spring Road clawing up the 1.15% of Attica Hill, but didn't get any photos, electing instead for multiple video angles...

More to come...

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Quote ]

Date: 04/23/18 22:18
Re: The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

After letting 36T go, we went back to Buffalo to see what happened...

Photos 13-14: It's not a Dash-8, and it's coming straight out of the sun, but smoky CSXT SD60 #8718 (another Conrail vet, ex-CR 6863) puts on an amusing show as CSX train Q388 gets underway out of Frontier Yard with CSXT #5315 leading... This ended up being the first train of a bizarre four-way meet, between trains Q388, Q635, Q161, and G053... I got some neat video of it happening but only captured photos of the first two trains...

Photo 15 is of Q635 with a rare all-EMD consist on CSX, including SD40-3 #4056, SD70MAC #4562, slug #2385, and GP40-2 #6985...

More to come...

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Quote ]

Date: 04/23/18 22:22
Re: The Ex-Cons Have Escaped!
Author: MC6853

After the four-way meet, we popped over to Bison Yard real quick because I spotted another YN2 C40 moving around... Turned out to be GECX #7339 (ex-CR 6147) in some really ratty paint... The locomotive is parked over Union Road in photo 16 (NY Route 277)...

Photo #17 shows CSX local freight Y202 reversing up Track #4 past the Depew Amtrak Station... It is about to veer onto the Gardenville running track here at CP-431 to work some industries... CSXT GP38-3 #2033, as per usual, is providing the power...

And lastly, photo #18 shows Amtrak train #281 coming into the station, with P42DC #190 for power rather than the usual dual-mode P32AC-DM...

Thanks for viewing!