Eastern Railroad Discussion > Some Heritage Freight Cars - Lake Erie Land

Sunday May 11, 2025
Around and About Vermilion and Huron, Ohio
56 degrees and a very cold blustery east wind

1. A catch of NS Train 39N at Risden Road, CP 224 west of Vermilion. NS 4625 is the solo leader and NS 4120 is the mid-train DPU. 

2. In the train consist were some interesting freight cars such as NW hopper 178344.

3. And while not a heritage car, interesting nontheless is Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern hopper 10198.
 

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4. An ex C&NW hopper with a nice C&NW logo. The reporting marks on this hopper were hard to read; looks like AEOX 310119. Maybe someone knows for sure.

5. Another surprise car in the consist was WP 38185, box car. We don't see many of these in this part of Ohio.

6. Shortly after the passage of 39N, 22H comes east. Today it came mid-afternoon, seen here at Coen Road, west of Vermilion under horrible lighting conditions. NS 4168 and 9947 provide the power and there were no Tesla autoracks on the rear.

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/25 16:06 by train1275.

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The rest of the day was spent roaming around looking for more trains and taking a short hike.

7. A pair of frisky egrets.

8. A turtle gets some sun.

9. A Green Heron with a fresh catch, maybe a bull frog tadpole ? He thought it was tasty. At that point we decided to go into Sandusky and get something a little more traditional for our lunch.

 

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Always good to see the old freight cars, even in their weathered and graffiti-ed states.

NW hopper 178344 shows the load limit weight at 221820 lbs, wonder if the newer paint shows the load limit
changed either higher of lower, if so what would be the reason besides age of the car?

The heron in the last pic is a green heron, haven't seen any of these in Indiana. Great blue herons are the
only ones I've observed...

Heath_Tower Wrote:
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Always good to see the old freight cars, even in
 their weathered and graffiti-ed states.

The heron in the last pic is a green heron,
haven't seen any of these in Indiana. Great blue
herons are the
only ones I've observed...

There are certain trains that always are worth watching closely as they pass by for old freight cars. This train today was especially fruitful in that regard.
Plenty of Blue Herons here in Ohio. The Green Herons are much more difficult to spot, and much smaller. I got this blue heron in Sandusky in the former B&O Sandusky dock area today while we had lunch. I sure wish I could have seen B&O operations here back in the day.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/25 16:27 by train1275.

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A 1905 Sanborn map of the B&O piers at Sandusky. The blue heron image posted above was taken as he was in the remains of the slip just north of the turntable. This area is all public park now and really nothing of the railroad operations remains.

Then an 1870 view of the area.

And a 1960's view of B&O RDC's working the waterfront trackage.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/25 16:38 by train1275.

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I love that RDC photo!

Dan

Posted from iPhone