Wednesday, January 30, 2013

[HD] FEC "ECH" Monster Train 101 with CLOSE Call - 01.02.2013



In this video, my friend and longtime FEC engineer Dave Shelley led the 12,000' monster all business on the first day of startup after the new year for the historic mainline. I've caught Dave several times -- why am I blogging this one in particular?

The added touch, that is. Yeah, it was only yesterday that I caught in the editing process that some genius, or should I say well-qualified Darwin candidate, decided to play chicken with one of the most premier trains on the FEC. He did so where it appeared by the direction and stature of the lights that he/she was 10 seconds from being swiped by the front plows of RA 105.
May this video serve as a lesson not to trespass, cross illegally, or cross tracks when a train is quite well in the picture. You're not doing yourself a favor by trying to get on the other side, and are instead putting your safety and well being at risk.

Had the person mistimed by only eight to ten seconds, he/she would have been history.

Nonetheless, gotta love Dave's musical notes on the K5LLA (even though I could barely hear the freaking thing); the famed "Blue Light Salute", and his new magic trick - the dimming of the headlights. The latter was unexpected and just... cute I guess.


Monday, January 28, 2013

CSX SD70MACs sold to Paducah and Louisville

EDIT: WAS MISINFORMED ON SOME NUMBERS

I am "saddened" to report that 16 CSX SD70MACs have been written off the roster and are now the property of the Paducah and Louisville Railway, "PAL".

2 power moves of 8 units each ran from Corbin, KY to the area that they will be interchanged. They will be repainted into the PAL graphics.

This is awful in my eyes. They are phasing out some pretty strong EMD pullers.

The Class I cites declining coal shipments as why these are being sold. I guess these are the first to go since the EMDs have been admittedly a bit flawed especially the pre-pro SD70ACes. If I were CSX I would have sold some AC4400CWs though.

This dreadful move brings the 70MAC roster down from 220 units to 204 units.

I will never forget my catches of these locomotives.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Throwback Thursday

CSX Y220 from 5/26/08 on the Lehigh Spur with a gevo/dash 8. Cars for FRK, West Rail?, and Cemex.


Monday, January 21, 2013

Changes to Miami Terminal Locals

With the new year CSX appears to have taken to changing the profiles of their locals. If a source can confirm this that would be appreciated.

Y220 now has to work East Rail most of its days. This does not sound like good news since it appears CSX has abolished the midday and photo and video friendly (or unfriendly given the hassles) Y121. Y220 works all the terminal industries and those customers as well. I would not be surprised to see some of the workload in Hialeah shuffled to another yard job, but Y220 still is the main job. I will have to confirm if Y121 is abolished but given ATCS tracking, the switches have not been seen to point to East Rail in the midday hours. Now as an update, to contradict that, there is an occupancy on East Rail as of 12:45 PM. Hmm.

Y322 still runs as usual but has not been going to the Lehigh too often. It's still in its profile but probably on some sort of as needed basis.

O721 now appears to run Monday-Friday with the Rock Trains running as their K symbol on the weekend. The K-trains on record now show a trend favoring sporadic runs. December 22 and 29 K996 ran; the 22 was on O721's schedule more or less, and the 29th was on their ooooold schedule. January 6 saw the K996 again but in the morning, and January 13 saw K978 on the Lehigh Spur. K996 ran again this time on the 19th at night. O721 switches their customers Monday through Friday, evidenced on December 21, via Joe (BusProwler) on the 28th, and January 18th. Given the Homestead almost firmly sees 6 moves a week, this is a good upturn from five and this spells good news for the Homestead Sub.

More will be found out about these changes as time goes on.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Surprise! K978-13 Fresh off the Lehigh Spur

Surprise Surprise!

Only my fourth unique train catch in South Florida in 2013 (behind FEC 101, CSX Q453, FEC RBBX Circus Train), a K978 with the 5228, 3014 "GEVO Juice", and 66 Florida Rock hoppers straight out of the Lehigh Spur evokes some good and positive feelings.

The train is a sign of hope for the economy and hopefully one of things to come. A Sunday afternoon run, it reminisces the classic O719 which used to run mornings down the Homestead Sub. It actually took the Lehigh though. Here is some background info on FRK in the Lehigh.

Florida Rock on the Lehigh, a quarry at the intersection of NW 25 ST and 127 AV in unincorporated Miami-Dade county has in the past mined train loads of rock. I caught them pretty religiously between 2009 and 2011 on video until the "summer slump" of 2011 where not a train load even bothered to run following June 8's K974. All of the hoppers got sent to Krome Quarry, where the Yelvington trains usually go, and the Taft distributor ordered their aggregate there. I believe the next time they shipped out a train was April 2012 where Tim alerted me, but all I could get was limerock dust as I narrowly missed it.

October 10th came and two AC4400s, 461, 462, came fleeting light on the Lehigh at NW 107 Av as seen from La Carreta. What was just so nice was that that same day, Brooksville Cemex got its first coal train in two years, N036. Some quotes on the FRKX hoppers that day did say that they were placed at Lehigh October 10th, leading me to believe that was why the power came back light. I believe it was either the 12th or 19th that the rock train left, and when it came back, the cars went to Sterling. Here's something interesting though: As FRKX 195 was seen heading that way on the 28th, somehow it went north on a K978 and came to the Lehigh as it was seen yesterday on the K978.

Why did they change their routing? The quarry was sued for some environmental issue and placed on moratorium for a while. It began mining last spring but only a handful of rock trains actually ran.

Here is a flagship video of O721 on the Lehigh Spur with a Florida Rock train in Oct 2010.


Here, towards the end of the package is a video of O721 on the Homestead Sub with the Florida Rock train in 2012 coming from Krome. 11:48 mark.



And here, in broad daylight (rarity), a spiel of photos of the train on January 13, on the Miami Sub. This is the first time since 2007 where I could shoot one of these northbound loaded drags in daylight south of the Miami terminal. I was eating brunch or even barely awake when this thing ran the Lehigh so I caught up to it when it waited on authority to dog P670 into the high iron.




Let's hope that there will be MANY MANY more of these rock trains. Yes, some people may not like to be sitting around waiting at a grade crossing for these to clear, but they are an indicator of how the economy is doing. 

ROCK ON!

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Mystery on the Downtown Spur

Looks like a former rail customer has been spotted... Perhaps former as in 25-30 years.

The Waste Paper-bounded spur may not look like it, but that track once went across 22 ST and 17 AV into a small industrial area. See the purple markings on the image.

Another one has been discovered with an older image. East of 22 AV, a track once went south to a neighboring customer.

This my friends is the Miami Rail Scene of the 1980s. Really nostalgic. Imagine the long shifts the jobs would have to endure in areas like this!

In other interesting info, the line was double tracked up until the mid 1980s after Miami proper stopped serving Amtrak. I still wonder why in the world did they have to move to Hialeah? I really wish Amtrak would creep into Downtown Miami. But when the MIC opens and Amtrak moves south, this will be the first time an Amtrak has regularly pounded Iris Interlocking, passed the bustling Hialeah Market, and bypass Hialeah Yard since the 80s. A history making event that will be for sure.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

FEC 143

FEC 143 by brickbuilder711
FEC 143, a photo by brickbuilder711 on Flickr.

Magnum opus for me of this train. It was a fun chase that had me meeting up with almost every local railfan and even a few guests. Videos to follow so I'll let those tell the story.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

2012: A Year in Logistics

Throughout the year, within the scope of my life I have been able to focus on trains quite a bit. I'm not sure if it's more than I should but at least for me to have maintained decent grades, I guess it will do.

This  blog post will reflect on the "Winners" and "losers" of the SFL area in terms of industry...

First, the losers... Yes, we gotta get that over with.
The Lehigh Spur has not been taking in nearly as much as it did back in the day. When I started filming in the spur, activity occured 3-4 times a week, just as much as the Homestead Sub. This was 2009. 2011 presented the biggest flop when FRKX stopped producing rock trains and since then, there have been only two rock trains to date coming from the Lehigh Spur's plant. Coal ash/flyash/whatever goes in the First Union hoppers or "Green Gons" of the past has been down since 2009 but has not shown much picking up. It may appear given the current schedule that the Lehigh is all but abandoned, but the thing is now Y322 works the spur in weekday mornings. Carloads have topped 2-3 per week of the construction material on average. There was one Q453 (Dec 2) that brought optimism given it had about 9 loads, and the 29th had one load.
The coal on the other hand has been in good shape and unit trains have been maintaining a mostly monthly pattern. V149, 48, 47, and 45 have run in total January, February, April, June, July, August, October, November, and December. 9 coal trains have run this year which is pretty good compared with years past as I think the annual records were about 8. But what could deceive things is the December coal train came at the very end of the month so perhaps there could be one less expected train in January.

The Downtown Spur has been so-so this whole year but has been in better shape come the end of the year. Any cuts that look like it on Q452 trains seen throughout have been fairly short especially in the summer. However, the number of cars have really shot up at the end of the year with up and coming railfan Timothy Duggan bagging a Y322 with 13 cars. I have also noticed back to back Q453s with high scrap gondolas for Miami Iron in the "Last Railfanning Weekend of 2012" (Video coming soon). Things appeared as though Trujillo, Family & Sons, Sun Gas, CBI, Miami Iron, FPT (which had 2 gons on Q453-28 December), et al are receiving, in the end.

The Homestead Sub south of Sterling has spelled desolation, desolation, desolation. AFEC appears not to be taking in much if any at all, even though they had cars in January. Part of this could be noticed by O721 having 6-axle power most of the time, whereas the 75lb section of track is 4-axle only. Properties that once housed Stock and a boxcar customer in proper still carry For Lease signs, current to last Saturday the 29th.

The Winners:
Homestead Sub  between the GPC Spur and Hialeah has been strong industrially. Almost every time I catch O721, it would have something additional to its mix for Conrad Yelvington. Covered "Tubs" (gravity discharge covered hoppers) have shown up much more frequently, and so did Probuild's centerbeams. At times they would receive two maybe three beams of gypsum. Cars for Orr have also started showing up on Sundays as they would most others and shipments could top 10 cars (July 31). I have also at times seen cars for Seal-Tite Plastics.

East Rail held out strong especially around SALCO. The demand for freight apparently prompted CSX to add job Y121 beginning June 2. However, I believe that job is either rare or no longer. Cars are still delivered almost daily on job Y220. Tompkins has also been very strong, especially whereas in June I saw a whole line of boxcars spotted at an industry.

The biggest winner is the Pompano corridor. O717 has always had its work cut out for it, rain or shine, and 2012 was no exception. Especially towards the end of the year, there would be ample freight waiting for it in Dania's "Middle Track" and "Back track". The cut of cars has been recently noticed to go to the curve in front of the airport's runway whereas it hasn't for much of the year. I have noticed at year's end plenty of cars for Cross Dock, Boise-Cascade, Home Depot, and Amerigas. Amerigas is one really active customer, sometimes prompting the train to work weekends to set out cars for it.

Rock has slowly shifted upwards, especially at years' end. There has been a time peaking in the Summer where both FEC and CSX rock shipped well, but at some point CSX rock went mute for some undisclosed reason (end of July). K996 has been the most prominent rock train, probably for the 618-I-4 connector construction.

In the end, this was a great year for railfanning and business is slowly improving, even though the signs are subtle. Let's hope 2013 will be even better!