Eastern Railroad Discussion > The U18B's Of The Pickens Railway

Wednesday after Hartwell we made our way over to Anderson, SC to look for Pickens. We started at the shops and worked our way up north. With no sign of them we headed over to Belton thinking they may have ran over that way. We got a mile from Belton where we found them coming west. This job normally runs with 1 unit and usually doesn't run west in the afternoon. This day they had 2 U18B's and 2 cars for the trip back to Anderson. Once back in Anderson they made a few switching moves and headed back south towards Gluck. The U18B's are the last of their kind left and are Ex CSX MofW units. Enjoy!

A few shots west of Belton

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Nearing Anderson

Passing over the trestle east of town

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Shoving at Anderson

Heading south out of Anderson

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Are any U18B's currently preserved in a museum?   

A beautiful set of photos to pay tribute to the U18B's.
Bob

Milwaukee Wrote:
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> Are any U18B's currently preserved in a museum?
>   

As far as I know and from rosters I have seen, there are less than 18 GE U series locomotives preserved and no U18Bs.

Z

23 years ago I was working out of Martin Ky, and was called for a work train to pick up the mess after a derailment on Deane mountain. We had a handful of low sided gons and a knuckle boom that could ride on top the cars....and a caboose.....some of the cars had some scrap already and some were empty, and we had one lowly U18B pumpkin engine.....I rode the caboose since we didn't have an EOT, and when we got to the foot of Deane mountain we limped down to a crawl......I hollered at the engineer inquired if I should get out and push....he said..."If I thought it would work I'd say yes!  We did make it to the wreck site though and sifted through the cuttings filling each car.....in the end, to get back down the mountan.....the engineer tried to push the train back down with ten pounds and it wouldn't shove.....so I set a retainer on three cars and we were able to drift down at a reasonable speed. Those U18's just did not like grades with their little V8 engines!

      No trestle in photo 6, that is a bridge.

Thanks for the coverage!  I'm wondering if Pickens now has the most operational U-boats, period, on any railroad.  There just aren't very many Universal-series locomotives of any model left in revenue service anymore.  I was looking back at a list of possibly operational U23B's I made back in 2011, and most of those are gone now, too.

Not preserved in a museum but there is an ex CSXT U-18B on the Smokey Mountain tourist railroad. It is laying in the spot where they wrecked it for the movie "The Fugitive".
zephyrus Wrote:
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> Milwaukee Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Are any U18B's currently preserved in a museum?
> >   
>
> As far as I know and from rosters I have seen,
> there are less than 18 GE U series locomotives
> preserved and no U18Bs.
>
> Z

You cannot miss those locos...?!

Nice pics!!

nice series of shots guess the job thing fell thru :(
                                  Mark

I remember when they were new SCL units. They weren't worth much then. Good description by previous poster.

I was intrigued by the old yarn mill building. A reminder of how important the textile industry once was in the USA, especially in the South and Northeast.

One of your best series Trey, well done. I'll be paying them a visit in February if all goes according to plan.

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH

Great shots, the units look clean and well cared for. I remember the days on the LS&I when the power set was the last U25C and
the last two U23Cs and we were all up there chasing Alcos!  Great to see shots of the little boats.

Out 

I've heard Pickens keeps using them motors because their in house machinist finds them easy to work on.....I guess as long as they do the job that's all you need. Aside from being hopeless on grades they are great fun to run. 

Hey!  The bridge has no graffiti as do the cars.

Amazing.   47 years old,  and 20 years after they left the CSX roster,  and they look better than ever in orange paint and with the same number