FL9

It was a good time to stay at home and organize my files as a freezing drizzle fell outside all day.  I spun the wheel and came up with these three views from the not to distant past in eastern Ohio.  I always liked the Rio Grande’s paint scheme, and so when some of their management took over at the Wheeling & Lake Erie, it was refreshing to see a new version of that classic emerge.

First we see a freshly painted SD40-2 climbing the eastbound grade on the Rook Subdivision between Jewett and Pittsburgh Junction with traffic for Mingo Juction on the Ohio River.  I could hear him coming for miles as he snaked up the narrow run at walking speed in 2003.

A day later finds us at Pittsburgh Junction as another eastbound, this time with two SD40-2’s pulling a train of iron ore, follows the Rook Subdivision towards Mingo Juction where the pellets will be delivered to Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel.  The line to the left is the Valley Subdivision to the Ohio River at Warrenton, which is only in service for the first four miles to the Nelms 1 MIne.

A short time later finds us on the nearby Ohio Central near Cadiz Junction looking down on the W&LE’s Nelms Turn, which operates between the Nelms 1 Mine and the processing plant located on the Ohio Central.  The train - consisting of two ex-NS GP35’s equipped with remote control for push-pull operation bracketing about thirty cars - is empty at this point as it heads back to Jewett and onto the W&LE to reload at the mine.

President’s Day tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, so I may venture out regardless of the overcast.