In reply to Purple Frog :
I've been trying to convince a friend to start a bicycle rickshaw taxi service with me. I figure it would be perfect for hauling people the 4-blocks to/from the train platform & casinos, and we could offer an extended ride along the beach between the Beau/Hard Rock downtown & Harrah's/Golden Nugget down on the point.
A better, in-service photo of the C&EI heritage unit. They even got the orange handrails on the rear of the unit.
The Georgia Railroad unit, out and about as well. I still find the order that they're producing these in to be really strange. It has to be random, since that's the onyl way I can explain Georgia Railroad getting a heritage unit before Seaboard Air Line. SAL was a much bigger component of CSX than Georgia Railroad. I have heard that they are intentionally waiting to unveil the Clinchfield heritage unit until late fall though, so that it'll be nice and fresh to haul the CSX Santa Train, which was started by Clinchfield Railroad.
I will say that I do actually really like the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie unit, #1875
P&LE U28Bs and GP38-2s at the D&H's yard in Binghamton, on two separate occasions. The P&LE power would take the coal trains from the Monongahela, run to Buffalo where they would be handed off to D&H crews at Bison Yard (the old Erie SK Yard in Buffalo, NY) and then go over the Conrail Southern Tier Line to the D&H at Binghamton, where they would run up to Mechanicville, NY and get on the Boston & Maine to head to the power plants at either Bow, NH or Holyoke, MA. Sometimes the trains would be exchange power at Bison Yard, but the D&H was always power short and often the P&LE power would stay on all the way up to New England. There are mentions two of, while they were waiting for the trains to be unloaded, the Boston & Maine would "borrow" the P&LE units and use them on some local trains, since they were also bankrupt and had a lack of new motive power.
A photo of a P&LE U28B, with the later livery that eliminated the yellow center stripe, changing crews at Lawrence, MA during the Guilford era. Considering they are unhooked and there is a B&M unit on the other end, this may be one of the times that B&M "borrowed" P&LE unit.
P&LE GP38 #2035, an ex-Penn Central unit purchased from Conrail, heads up a consist of Guilford and P&LE locomotives on this loaded coal train climbing the grade up the D&H above Hillcrest on its way up to the tunnel at Belden Hill and beyond across NY to Massachusetts onto the B&M to New Hampshire.
The #2808 emerges from the Belden Hill tunnel in a cloud of it's own exhaust, having climbed the steep grade up to Port Crane, NY.
One of those coal trains at Harpursville, NY with (some) D&H power on the front end. The #755 is a big U33C, which were the only 6-axle D&H power to escape the 1978 purge, with one of Maine Central's ex-Rock Island U25Bs behind it, then a Boston & Maine EMD of some sort in Guilford "Big G" livery, and then one of the ex-Lehigh Valley GP38-2s that D&H acquired in '76. The D&H Altschul Blue livery is falling off in sheets, revealing LV Cornell Red underneath. From what the D&H folks say, when those GP38-2s arrived, D&H didn't even bother to wash them off, just shot the blue paint over the top of dirt and oil and grease, which resulted in near immediate failure.
A D&H loaded Bow Coal train led by BM GP39-2 #360, PLE GP38s #2040, #2033, #2057 and #2028, and BM GP39-2 #352, and pushers, D&H U33Cs #663 and #652 at Sanitaria Springs circa March 1986. The D&H's U33Cs that they purchased new had been in the 750 number series, while the 600-series units had been purchased used from Conrail, which is why the #652 is in solid blue. Some of them were in Penn Central black still, when they arrived, and they looked like absolute junk, but the mechanical department said that despite their rough looks, they had been found to be in very good mechanical condition before they were purchased. The GP39-2s were originally D&H 7600-series units, bought new by the D&H, which Guilford sold to the B&M. Guilford was playing a whole shell game, selling D&H power to B&M and Maine Central and Springfield Terminal almost immediately.
And the inverse of other B&M power on D&H rails, we have D&H power headed east towards Mechanicville on B&M rails. Obviously taken pre-1978, since all the D&H C628s went to Mexico in '78, the C628s, and all other 6-axle power, were banned from the B&M in pretty short order. The B&M practiced a lot of false economic measures such as inferior ties, not cleaning ballast, and using old rails that should have been replaced. They also had made devastating cuts in the ranks of Mow employees, which suppressed morale and initiative in their ranks. This resulted in a road that was held together by an athiest's prayer, and those C628s were heavy and had those track-mangling Alco Tri-Mount trucks under them. Both D&H and EL power were running through to Boston and the six-axle units were brutal on the B&M's "Wreck of the Week" trackage. They were soon excluded from the property much the same way that D&H didn't run them north of Whitehall. Too many sharp curves and no wood under them (on the B&M) to hold the rail.
An even stranger case is this D&H Alco C628 mixed in with LTV Mining F9As, F9Bs and an Alco C420 out to the Hoyt Lakes region in Minnesota. I can find no other photos of a D&H C628 out to Erie Mining and barely any information. Seems like after D&H decided to get rid of the C628s, SD45s and U30Cs, but before they went to Mexico, Erie Mining tried a few. Erie Mining ran heavy trains on steep grades, which would make them seem ideal to use big 6-axle power, but the temporary trackage down into the pit was often too light and too curvy to support big power, which is likely why they didn't buy them. There's mention that the D&H C628s also may have gone from there over to be borrowed by C&NW for a brief bit. C&NW did have big taconite-hauling operations nearby, and at the time was about to purchase, or had purchased, C628s from N&W to replace the old Fairbanks-Morse H-16-66s they were running up there. Maybe the D&H units were a test run to see if the N&W units would work, or maybe they were used to bolster the numbers of the C628s briefly. Hard to say, since there seem to be no photos and no real info.
I found another shot of one of the C628s in a different consist, with two F9As back to back, then D&H #603, then two Alcos belonging to Erie Mining. The first one appears to be a C420, since the last two digits are 20 and the C420s were #7220-#7222. The other one looks like it might be one of the RS-11s, based off of the radiator shape. From what more info I could dig up, D&H leased three C628s in 1973, so a full 5 years before the six axle purge, with Erie Mining borrowing two for six months and one for four months. Really interesting is that, despite the short lease, Erie Mining has applied their own numbers to the cab and nose of the #603
A rare shot of two of the Erie Mining Co. low-nose RS-11s out on the mainline at Hoyt Lakes. The RS-11s typically stayed down in the mine and left the mainline train handling to the F9s and Alco Centuries, so they didn't get out much.
An empty ore train is pictured at the west portal of Cramer Tunnel as it returns to the plant site from the dock. Power is an A-B-B set of F units plus a GP38 and a C420. Taken in 1991, the F9s were obviously antiques, but the C420 was no spring chicken either. The F9s remained the favored road power and ran right up until the end of regular operations in 2001, and they were the last F9s in regular revenue service.
The #4213, an F9B, a second F9A and a C420 unload taconite ore into the Adam E. Cornelius, a 680-foot vessel sailing for American Steamship Co., and the Charles M. Beeghly, a 806-foot boat from the Interlake Steamship Company fleet. Over the years, the Adam E. Cornelius has earned a reputation of being a “hard luck” boat; it has been grounded several times, lost power in open water, struck an Interstate Highway bridge, suffered major ice damage, and yet still remains active today!
The sole C424 on the Erie Mining roster, loading cars at the east end of the Dunka Branch. The #7230 survives to this day, having been scooped up by Jerry Jacobson and moved to his Ohio Central, and then being moved to the Age of Steam Roundhouse after it's founding. It's still in faded, grungy Erie Mining yellow and maroon.
C420 #7222 working a crude ore train at one of the many Hoyt Lakes ore loading sites. I've seen the #7222, after the final shutdown of the railroad in 2014, all the unsold locomotives were auctioned off and Delaware-Lackawanna bought the #7222 and moved it to the Von Storch shops in Scranton. It's sitting there, awaiting a potential revival.
F9s move ore toward Taconite Harbor on dreary, yet colorful autumn day of September 23, 1993. This view is a few miles west of Taconite Harbor near the Cramer Road grade crossing.
F9A #4214 leads a consist that includes a leased Duluth, Missabe & Iron Ore SD18, an EMCo GP38 and an EMCo F9B at Taconite Harbor, with Lake Superior in the background.
In 1986, LTV Steel took 100% ownership of Erie Mining Co. and the line from Hoyt Lakes to Taconite Harbor became the LTV Mining Railroad. Included in some of the changes were the arrival of these GP20Ms. Originally built for SP and CB&Q, they had been purchased by Precision National and had their turbochargers removed (hence the M) and were essentially a low-nose GP9 or GP18
The #4214 is in the lead as an ore train unloads its cargo into a ship at the ore dock in Taconite Harbor, MN in September of 1994. That ridiculous boxy structure on the roof is a retrofitted AC unit. The #4210 and #4214 were sold to the Vermillion Valley Railroad after the 2014 shutdown, and the VVR fortunately removed that AC unit right away.
A pretty rare shot of a solid A-B-B-A set of F9s at Sarto, MN with a loaded train.
A perfect A-B-B-A set of F9s pulls a loaded taconite east out of Cramer Tunnel at Cramer, Minnesota, on September 24, 1994. The lead locomotive, F9A #4213, was later involved in a runaway wreck at Taconite Harbor on January 13th, 1997. The train lost control on the 7-mile long grade down to the ore dock, with the four locomotives rolling over after hitting the switch that lined the train into a reverse loop, sparing damage to the dock. The engineer suffered a broken nose and ribs, while the brakeman escaped with cuts and bruises. Unfortunately, the locomotives weren’t so lucky, with the derailment claiming F9As #4213 and #4212 and F9Bs #4220 and #4221; all were heavily damaged and were scrapped on site.
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