Today's Train of Thought- Look What the April Showers Dragged in, May 2nd 2012

With just a few days to go before the 138th Kentucky Derby, today's train of thought takes us to the Bluegrass state. Even though the city hasn't seen regular passenger service since 2003, the rails around Louisville, KY will host office car specials from Norfolk Southern, CSX, RJ Corman Kentucky Lines and an Amtrak charter as guests and VIPs are ushered into the area by train for the annual Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs [NASDAQ- CHDN].

The former L&N Old Road line between Lexington and Louisville, KY was acquired by contractor RJ Corman from CSX in September 2003. Under CSX, that portion of the old L&N saw traffic in the form of corn syrup, bricks, peanuts, plastics and fertilizer- since then, Corman has not only kept most of the shippers from CSX days but also added carloads of sand dredged from the Ohio River to be made into cement and an almost-daily unit train of aluminum ingots between AlCan's Berea, KY recycling plant to Logan Aluminum in South Union, KY [according to the RJ Corman homepage, one aluminum ingot is made up of more than a million cans, a little something to think about the next time you're knocking a cold one back- NANESB!]. The line also recieves more than 100,000 annual carloads from SJ Smucker's [NYSE- SJM] Jif Peanut Butter plant in Lexington- the largest such facility in the world.

Here, with less than a month to go before the 2012 Kentucky Derby, railpictures.net contributor Bo Gray catches RJ Corman Lines SD40T-2 #8799 charging past the dogwoods in bloom at the gates of the cemetary outside of Midway, KY with a westbound ingot train on a sunny Easter afternoon. Technically this wouldn't be then end result of the old saying April showers bring May flowers, since the photo was taken in April, but I thought Bo Gray tied this scene togather very nicely.