The Pennyrail Online Edition

Submitted by Chuck Hinrichs

NEW ORLEANS — A CSX train conductor was shot and killed in a robbery early Sunday, police said.  It happened near Marshall Foch Street and Florida Boulevard on the Norfolk Southern Railroad just after 12:30 a.m.  New Orleans Police Department officials said the train was traveling west when it came to stop due to traffic delays. That’s when police said the gunman got on board, shot at the conductor and ran.   The 52-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene.

May 31st – June 1st 1886 all the rail lines in the South, including the IC, were converted to standard gauge from the various gauges in use until then. 11,000 miles of rail were switched in 24 hours. Pretty impressive. - submitted by Chuck Hinrichs

Chuck Hinrichs caught this northbound CSX manifest at Latham early afternoon January 23, 2010, with four  CSX B36-7s in the consist.  Chuck – “A lot of these old warhorses have been pulled from the roster and I wonder where these four might be headed.”  Ed. – from looks of the cover on the trailing unit, the vintage GEs are probably dead in tow. – Photos by Chuck Hinrichs

Below, At Latham a north-bound string of empty hoppers held the main with the end of the train still blocking a couple of crossings in Hopkinsville. A southbound grain train took the siding.  This train had a Conrail painted GE on the point.  This train was in the siding for two more north-bounds including the train with the B36-7s and the Q120.  Photos by Chuck Hinrichs.

The wife and I were in Paducah Saturday (12/5) for some shopping and a bit of train chasing. There were three UP coal trains in the area as well as an Oakway powered coal train outbound for Grand Rivers.The  P&L local was returning to North Yard and there was the usual weekend gaggle of power at the office/shop area. The hit of the day, however, was the Oakway coal train approaching the new bridge over the Tennessee River just below Kentucky Dam. The road and railroad that used to cross the dam now cross the river on a pair of new bridges.

On Monday I was returning home from the Mall in Hopkinsville and caught an infrequent Fort Campbell Rail movement – a long string of empty flats southbound to the Fort.    I caught the pair of Army Geeps below the new Lovers Lane overpass.

Army GP10s southbound with empty flats for Ft Campbell. – Photo by Chuck Hinrichs 12/7/09

A coal train with Oakway power is crossing the new rail bridge over the Tennessee River. Photo by Chuck Hinrichs 12/5/09

CN orders 70 new high-horsepower locomotives from GE and EMD – New diesel-electric locomotives will increase fuel efficiency, improve customer service and cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

MONTREAL, Oct. 21, 2009 — CN (TSX: CNR)(NYSE: CNI) announced today orders for 70 new high-horsepower locomotives from GE Transportation, a unit of General Electric Co. (GE), and Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc. (EMD).  CN will acquire 35 ES44DC locomotives from GE starting in the fourth quarter of 2010, and 35 SD70M-2s from EMD beginning in January 2011. The GE locomotives produce 4,400 horsepower and the EMDs 4,350 horsepower.  The new units are part of CN’s multi-year locomotive-renewal program aimed at continuously increasing fuel efficiency, improving service reliability for its customers, and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new locomotives are 15-20 per cent more fuel-efficient than the ones they will replace and will comply fully with the latest regulatory requirements for reduced locomotive exhaust emissions.  In addition, the new GE and EMD locomotives will be equipped with distributed power (DP) capability. DP enables remote control of a locomotive or locomotives throughout a train from the lead control locomotive.  DP provides faster, smoother train starts, improved braking and lower pulling forces at the head-end of a train. This enables CN to run fewer and more efficient trains and to take advantage of the productivity gains from its extended siding program. With more optimum matching of motive power to train weight, DP locomotives also allow CN to reduce fuel consumption and reduce emissions.

CN is the green, energy-efficient choice for shippers. Rail has been shown to be up to six times more energy-efficient than heavy trucks, because rail consumes a fraction of the fuel to transport one ton of freight one kilometer. In fact, we can move one tonne of freight almost 200 kilometers on just one liter of fuel. CN has a comprehensive corporate environmental policy and works closely with the rail industry in Canada and the United States and government agencies on ways to reduce its emissions.  The company’s innovative Precision Railroading model, and partnership agreements with other railroads to share assets and deliver interchange traffic at the most efficient gateways, have also reduced fuel consumption and emissions.

Submitted by Chuck Hinrichs

When the tri and bi levels were open, at night one would see folks riding in style.  The keys are in the vehicles and some gas in the tanks.  In the summer the vehicles were running, with the a/c, in the winter, the heaters, along with radios/stereos and dome/interior lights on at night, some folks reading, what I can only assume, to be the Wall Street Journal.  Tractors and combines with enclosed cabs were also a good choice.

Once got a call from Thatcher Plastics on the Island in Muscatine, that they had problem with a covered hopper load of plastic pellets.  The carman and I went down to do an OS&D. Seems someone decided it would be a smooth dry ride on top of the plastic pellets, with having dug out enough of the pellets to be low enough in the commodity that he/she could close in the inlet cap. This decision also included using that load of pellets as their personal waste basket and bathroom.  Needless to say, the load was deemed contaminated and rejected.

Another incident involved the police calling the Depot, stating a rail car had a fire in the rail car. We got the hoghead to whoa that rail car in front of the Depot.  Found one of the rail riders had started a fire in a wooden floored gondola and just his luck, the floor caught on fire.  The fire was put out and the rail rider then started, left, right, left, right.

Just another day in that wild and wacky world of railroading.

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I saw a couple of kids try to hop on a westbound near the trailer park just west of the Newton yard west switch, but it was going just a bit too fast for them.

James Norman Hall of Colfax, who co-wrote Mutiny on the Bounty, wrote in the book, My Island Home about he and a friend catching a ride at night on the pilot of a locomotive when a Rock Island train stopped for water in Colfax and riding to Grinnell, and then how they caught a westbound home.  Grinnell had a large hobo jungle south of the CRI&P/M&StL Jct near a pond.  Hall also reported that when a Rock Island coal train would stall or have to double the hill on the grade up to Mitchellville, the locals would avail themselves to free winter fuel.

Back in the twenties a local reporter, who was trying to be politically correct for the time,  wrote that  a “negro tourist” described the wreck of a Rock Island freight on which he was riding that was speeding down grade into Kellogg and derailed.  There’s a culvert a few hundred yards west of the Newton CRI&P depot known as bum’s tunnel.

Another hangout was under  the  West 8th Street  “overhead rainbow bridge” in Newton and a transient was killed there by the eastbound Rocky Mountain Rocket in the middle of the night. My father said there used to be hobo shorthand there telling the hobos that they could get a free meal at his grandmother’s house just east of Washington School on 1st  Ave W in Newton.  Dad said she would serve them a sandwich and coffee on a table in the backyard.  This was back in the twenties.

-John Nelson, Kellogg, IA