To celebrate the second full day of Spring my dad and I decided to do some adventuring. We set out on a cool, overcast day to find some hobby shops and hopefully run into some trains. Well, we did find a hobby shop (more on that in a later post). The other one we were looking for was out of business.
After visiting the first shop in Middletown we were on Oxford State Road near AK Steel when we noticed a Norfolk Southern train slowly approaching the crossing.
We did a quick U-turn and were rewarded with the crossing lights beginning to flash. This train couldn’t have been moving more than 3 or 4 miles per hour as it approached the plant. It is not often you see a train creep over the grade crossing like we did here.
Next, to our astonishment, the train came to a complete halt in the middle of the crossing. Apparently the switch just inside the perimeter of the plant was manually thrown, and the brakeman had to get out to throw it. Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot of this as he was on the other side of the engine.
After this the long train of empty coil cars slowly rolled into the plant. I took a number of shots of the different cars, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in the train’s makeup.
Later on we were in Glendale Ohio, just west of Sharonville. They have a very nice museum here in a restored Cincinnai, Hamilton, and Dayton Depot. The volunteers were very friendly and eager to explain the history of this historic community. I would recommend it to anyone in the area. Open 11-3 Tuesday and Saturday.
While we were in the depot we heard the whistle and quickly rushed out expecting a train. To our surprise we instead saw this CSX GP40 running light and heading south.
Sadly I didn’t get many shots. It had to be going around 60-70 mph and was gone before I could get another shot in. Apparently this day was a day of speed extremes.
Here it comes…
…and there it goes!
