Today's Train of Thought- Throroughbreds and Pumpkins, Oct 31st, 2014

Today's Train of Thought takes us to a pumpkin patch rural central Pennsylvania that just happens to abut the former Pennsy mainline between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, PA. Here, rrpicturearchives.net contributor Rick Erben caught Norfolk Southern C40-9W #9978 leading a motley lashup- including an SD60I, an SD40-2, a GP38-2 still in Conrail blue and a C39-8- as it leads an eastbound manifest through the quiet Juniata County village of Mexico on Oct 21st, 2010. The pumpkins in the foreground still have a few days to be scooped and made into jack-o-lanterns or pies in time for Halloween that year.

Today's Train of Thought- Pins and Needles, June 21st, 2013

Today's train of though takes us to the California high desert just west of the Colorado River town of Needles.

Between the Los Angeles Basin and Albuquerque, NM, the fabled Route 66 paralleled the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe's transcontinental mainline, which to this day covers a lot of rugged and sparsely populated territory. From there, both the Santa Fe and Route 66 took dramatically different routes between New Mexico and Chicago- with the Santa Fe going through Colorado and western Kansas and the 66 swinging northeast past Oklahoma City and through the Ozarks on its way to St Louis and Chicago.

With a number of songs and even a TV show written in its honor, Route 66- sometimes known as the Mother Road or Main Street of America- began falling into decline with the completion of the parallel Interstate 40. While decommissioned as a US Highway in 1985, several states mark the former Main Street of America with 'Historic Route 66' markers along the way. Other stretches of the former Route 66 being re-branded state highway 66 in places like Kansas, California,  Missouri, Arizona or Oklahoma.

But as Route 66 fell into decline, the Santa Fe mainline remained an important gateway into and out of the state of California- even after the BNSF merger. The remote nature of the Mojave Desert in California also meant that the Santa Fe had to bring in water to remote towns such as Amboy or Cadiz by tank car- a practice that reportedly continues to this day under BNSF.

The concentration of military facilities around Barstow, CA (the US Army's Fort Irwin, Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow and Edwards Air Force Base) also means that both the BNSF and Union Pacific [via their Salt Lake City- Barstow line- NANESB!] frequently run trains consisting of nothing but military equipment from bases all across the nation destined for the military facilities in the California desert.

Here, railpictures.net contributor Drew Mitchem caught BNSF C44-9W #4955 as it leads a westbound extra consisting of Humvees, trailers, generators, trucks, earthmovers and MRAPs on flatcars as it climbs its way out the Colorado River Valley on Feb 25th, 2012.

Today's Train of Thought- Turning Over A New (River) Leaf, October 9, 2012,

Today's train of thought takes us to a fairly remote and isloated stretch of the Mountaineer State just as the leaves are beginning to turn color.

Founded at the turn of the last century, the tiny West Virginia village of Thurmond is nestled along the New River and the former Chesapeake & Ohio mainline from Virginia to the Midwest. The town in Fayette County reportedly wasn't accesable by road until the 1920s and to this day, a combined single lane road bridge and single track rail line that accomodated a C&O branchline to one of the coal mines to the west.

Like many other towns throughout Appalachia, Thurmond's fortunes rose and fell with the coal industry and two massive fires tore through downtown Thurmond in 1922 and 1930. Many merchants used the town's one and only road to set up shop elsewhere. By the mid 1950s, the Chesapeaske & Ohio had begun dieselization, phasing out the labor intensive steam locomotives that were serviced in Thrumond and facilities elsewhere along the C&O.

Perhaps the biggest developments in Thurmond since the C&O dieselized were the 1978 establishment of the New River National River by the National Parks Service and the 2005 sale of the CSX (former C&O) branchline between Thurmond and Mt. Hope, WV to shortline operator RJ Corman.

Although technically a 'ghost town', the 2010 census listed 5 full time residents and the isolated village is actually a flag stop on Amtrak's Chicago-Cincinnati-Washington D.C. Cardinal. The little C&O passenger depot is still used as visitor's center by the National Parks Service and occasionally for its intended purpose as the area is popular with campers, hikers, rail enthusiasts and boasts some of the best whitewhater rafting in the country.

Above, railpictures.net contributor JB Lockard caught CSX C44-9W #461 leading a coal drag past downtown Thurmond on October 9, 2011. In the background, one can see a new banner welcoming visitors to town and that the leaves are beginning to change in along the New River.

Iron Horse Roundup for June-July 2010

SWITZERLAND: A Japanese tourist was killed and 40 others were injured when the last three cars of the 6-car Glacier Express derailed on July 23rd in Fiesch Switzerland. Sometimes known as 'The Slowest Express Train in the World', the Glacier express travels between Zermatt and St. Moritz, Switzerland at an average speed of 30km per hour with coaches featuring specially designed panoramic windows.

Authorities have yet to determine a cause of the derailment, although there is speculation that a heat kink (where a small portion of the track is warped by a dramatic change in temperature) could've played a role. The line remained shut down while authorities continue to investigate the scene. This is the most serious rail accident in Switzerland since 2006, when three people were killed in a collision with a runaway train.

Photo: Xinhua

CONGO: At least 76 people were killed and more than 700 injured when a passenger train travelling Pointe Noir and Brazzaville in Congo (the marginally more stable and less strife torn Congo as opposed to the much larger and more dysfunctional People's Democratic Republic of the Congo immediately to the South and formerly known as Zaire) derailed and four cars plunged down a ravine. According to a state radio broadcast, the cause of the derailment was excess speed while the train was entering a curve.

There are only a limited number of highways linking Congo's main port of Pointe Noire and the capital city of Brazzaville. The 502km Chemin de Fer Congo-Ocean (Congo-Ocean Railway) was completed in the 1920s using conscripted labor. To this day, the line sees significant freight and passenger traffic through the mountains and equatorial rainforest while a Chinese-backed $500 million highway project is in the planning stages. This is the African nation's worst rail accident since 1991 when a collision between a freight train and passenger train just east of Pointe Noire killed at least 100 people.

SPAIN: 13 partygoers were killed on June 23rd in Castelldefels, Catalona, Spain while en route to a St. John's Eve beachfront party. The deceased, identified as immigrants from different parts of South America, were struck by a high-speed train passing through the station when they tried crossing the tracks between platforms to avoid using a crowded pedestrian underpass. At the time of the collision the high-speed RENFE train was travelling at 85 MPH, which was actually below the speed limit.

Photo: The Hindu

INDIA: A collision between two passenger trains in West Bengal on July 19 left 66 dead and 165 injured. The Uttar Banga Express slammed into the rear of the slower moving Vanachal Express in Sainthia station. Eyewitnesses estimated the Uttar Benga express was travelling anywhere from 80-90 km per hour upon impact when the station's track speed was only 30 km per hour. The impact sent the three rear cars of the Vanachal express crashing into an adjacent pedestrian bridge over the tracks.

At this time, investigators are still attempting to determine a cause. One theory was that the crew in the locomotive was drugged or unconscious, although a post mortem didn't indicate any traces of drugs. Eyewitnesses at the Uttar Benga Express' previous stop- just 10km away- saw nothing out of the ordinary with the crew there. However, the head end crew did not apply the brakes or attempt to jump when a collision was imminent.

An India Railways investigation found that the brakes were in working order. Some media outlets have speculated that the Vanachal Express was running behind because the crew was offloading some off-the-books freight at Sainthia. However, this would not account for the Uttar Benga Express travelling nearly triple the speed limit and making no attempt to stop immediately before the collision. The Sainthia station master unsuccessfully attempted to contact the head end crew of the Uttar Benga Express via radio, but that was only 30 seconds prior to impact.

More recently, investigators are looking at whether or not the signals immediately before the Sainthia station were working properly.

Photo: Lucas MR

BRAZIL: ALL Logistica [BOVESPA: ALLL11] and Cosan ltd. [NYSE: CZZ] have announced a joint venture in Rumo Logistica, a multimodal logistic system for the storage and export of bulk quantities of sugar (and byproducts such as ethanol) produced by Cosan to export at the port of Santos in São Paulo state. To accommodate the anticipated increase in carloadings, Cosan and ALL have purchased some brand new GE C44-9Ws painted in this striking sliver and blue scheme.

The Brazilian government has also entered into talks with ALL Logistica, MRS Logistica and VALE S.A. [NYSE: VALE] over proposed rules designed to increase capacity and competition and cut freight costs. Transportation minister Paulo Passos says President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva plans on issuing a decree calling for an increase sharing of assets and put idle or abandoned right-of-ways back in operation in order to sharply reduce the price of hauling freight. Under this agreement, the Brazilian government would be responsible for building any new right of way. The transportation said that President Lula's plan would further reduce the nation's dependence on freight hauled by truck [No word on if any of VALE, ALL or MRS's representatives sent a Portuguese-language edition of Atlas Shrugged off to Lula's office in response- NANESB!]

SOUTH AFRICA: A Father's Day steam-powered excursion train derailed on a branch line between Pretoria and Cullinan, South Africa. None of the 627 passengers on board were seriously injured and were subsequently bussed to their destinations from the derailment site. Investigators and railway officials almost immediately noticed some 50 ties missing from the tracks near the Cullinan station and believe that to be the cause as the train was operating at low speeds on the branch.

South African Preservation Group Friends of The Rail is putting forward an appeal for funds towards repairing some of the coaches involved as well as 4-8-2 #3117, built in 1947 by the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow, Scotland.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first accident of the year involving restored rolling stock and equipment in South Africa. Three workers were killed when coaches from the Rovos Rail luxury train rolled away from the locomotives that were being swapped at a station stop in Pretoria back in April.

More recently, an ore train on the Saldhana line in Western Cape province derailed on July 24, closing down the iron-ore hauling route until repairs could be made. There were no reports of injuries, although it was anticipated the mishap would affect iron ore output over the next several days.

Photo: Jim Spears

CANADA: In a surprise move, the Canadian National purchased 35 GE C40-8s secondhand from Union Pacific. Canadian Railway Observations reports that the CN paid near-scrap prices for the 20 year old six-axle 4000 HP units and they will be repainted and overhauled in the former Illinois Central shops in Homewood, IL and Centralia, IL for DPU service systemwide. This was followed up by the purchase of 30 former Santa Fe/BNSF C40-8Ws that had been idle for nearly a year with the downturn in traffic. The purchases of the secondhand GEs coincides with the retirement of most of the ex-IC SD40-2s that CN 'inherited' with their 1998 acquisition of the Illinois Central.

Photo: Kevin Madore

USA: 'Endless Mountain Rails', the 2010 NRHS convention in Scranton PA, has wrapped up [which doesn't make it so endless, I guess- NANESB!]. A series of excursions were run out of the Steamtown National Historic site in downtown Scranton, although complications arose on June 24th when a truck collided with the Delaware-Lackawana bridge south of Moscow, PA, bending the rails prior to a Delaware Water Gap excursion. The excursions were initially powered by former Canadian National 2-8-2 Mikado #3259- Steamtown's workhorse- but the decision was made to use diesels like the Delaware-Lackawana RS3s and a duo of restored former Reading Railroad FP7s (neither of which were too far removed from the steam era themselves) which would've made it easier to pass the affected trackage than with the #3259.

Here, Reading FP7 #902 is seen charging past the former Delaware, Lackawana & Western depot in Moscow, PA with one of the Delaware Water Gap excursions on June 26th.

Two Photos: Mitch Goldman

Not one to be outdone, the Reading and Northern also ran concurrent excursions out of their Jim Thorpe, PA depot to wrap up the end of the NRHS convention and in preparation for the busy 4th of July weekend. Here, the R&N's stunning #425 is getting ready to head out over the former CNJ line out of Jim Thorpe and through Lehigh Gorge State Park on the 4th of July.

Today's Train of Thought- Blame it on Rio; July 3rd 2010

I'll let you in on a secret, NANESB! readers. Brazil is the only country I've had the dubious distinction of being kicked out of. Oh sure, my last night in Australia was spent in a jail cell but I was welcome to stay afterwards if I could just stay out of trouble didn't already have a flight to catch.

My ejection from Brazil was actually under far more mundane circumstances. You see, even if one is transiting through a tiny corner of the world's 5th largest country, Americans require a visa to enter Brazil. And that was the case about a decade ago when I was travelling through eastern Paraguay to the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls. Since the Argentine peso was pegged to the US dollar at an artificial 1:1 ratio at the time, that made Argentina an expensive place to visit and I decided to stock up on supplies at the border town of Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay (before it became a Latin American stronghold for Hezbollah, apparently). I naively figured I could just walk across the Ponte da Amizade into Brazil and continue on from there.

Not so fast, said the Brazilian customs guy on the other side. American passport holders required a visa, even if they were just transiting through. And with that, I was politely (but firmly) asked to return across the bridge. The Paraguayan official that put the exit stamp in my passport was a little surprised to see me come back so quickly. When I told him what happened, he seemed at something of a loss since the Brazilian consulate on that side of the border was closed for the holiday and couldn't issue a visa- and they don't issue visas at the border crossings themselves, either. But then he rather helpfully pointed out that if I wanted to go to the Argentine side of Iguazu falls, there was a special bus with a turnstile (separating the passengers who were heading from Argentina from the ones who were getting off in Brazil) that went from Ciudad Este to Foz do Iguaçu on the Brazilian side and then onto Puerto Iguazu on the Argentine side. So after waiting about an hour, the bus he was telling me about showed up and I got on, walked through the turnstile that separated the front from the back and was able to transit through Foz do Iguaçu (not exactly a 'must-see' city in and of itself) and ushered off only when it was time to pass through Argentina's customs.

However inconvenient it was, the experience didn't put me off of Brazil completely. I understand the scenery elsewhere in Brazil is nothing short of breathtaking and warrants a future visit from yours truly.

Also- to be honest- I thought for sure Brazil would advance to the finals of the World Cup this year and I would have ample opportunity to toss out some sweet sweet green & yellow clad ocular candy between now and the final. While there is no shortage of attractive Brazilian soccer fans, they all must be pretty bummed at (what they view as) Brazil's early exit from the 2010 World Cup.

With that said, any dejected female fans of Brazil who need some in-depth counselling and maybe a therapeutic backrub or thorough application of various scented suntan lotions are more than welcome to get a hold of me via this blog.

But then again, Brazil IS hosting the 2014 FIFA world cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, so it's not as though there's nothing for them to look forward to. Whereas we here in the USA haven't really arrived as a 'serious' soccer nation because of our marked lack of soccer-related rioting.

There there.

See? Things are looking up already!

I know....most of you are probably griping 'Enough with the attractive women barely concealed by various patchwork snippets of the Brazilian flag already- where are the trains?' Today's very roundabout Train of Though is to highlight the railways in Brazil. Like many a Latin American nation, they decided to privatize their railway network over the last 20 years.

The railway network generally is centered around the east of the country and didn't lend itself particularly well to passenger travel even when the state was willing to undertake such an endeavor.

Like the USA, freight rules supreme on Brazil's contemporary railway network, linking mines in the mineral-rich interior with the ports throughout the country. Such an example can be seen in this 330 car loaded ore train filmed in the state of Maranhão on the Estrada de Ferro Carajás by the crew member of another train waiting in the siding- this one of the railways in northeastern Brazil controlled by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce [NYSE: VALE]. The locomotives powering this behemoth of a train (which is nothing unusual on Vale's Brazilian lines) are all American- a mix of SD70MACs, C44-9Ws, C30-7s and an SD40-2 dispersed throughout the train. Over the last decade, Vale invested US$1.3 billion on it's Brazilian railroad infrastructure alone- the mining company has nearly 9000 km of track in Brazil.

With privatization comes modernization as well, although some have taken to preserving lines and rolling stock like the Santa Theresa Bonde in Rio De Janerio. There's also a burgeoning rail preservation movement in other parts of Brazil.

The lion's share of the freight-hauling seems to be divided among Vale and companies like ALL Logistica and MRS Logistica.

Here, railpictures.net contributor Alex Pisciottano shows us that trains will sometimes draw a crowd in Brazil as well, as Brasil Ferrovias C30-7 9279 tiptoes down some dual gauge trackage in Canguera, Sao Paulo state on an overcast March 22, 2008. Brasil Ferrovias was taken over by ALL Logisitca in 2006 and has been operating as a subsidiary since then.


It's also worth mentioning that ALL Logitisca operates the scenic Curitiba to Paranagua line in Brazil's southeastern Parana state. Besides revenue freight to and from the busy port of Paranagua, there is also a Budd-powered excursion between the two cities called the Serra Verde express. Here, railpictures.net contributor Guilherme Citolin caught ALL Logisitca G22-C (an EMD Export model) clinging to the mountainside at Morretes, Parana on its long climb up from Parana- also in March 2008.

So cheer up, Brazil. Not only is your railway network- and by extension, your economy- humming along (thanks in large part to American locomotives purchased new and secondhand from the USA, Canada and even Namibia), but you could be getting a high-speed rail line between Sao Paulo and Rio in time for the 2014 World Cup. Heck- even George Soros has taken a shine to Petrobras.

So chin up, all you you bandeira-brandishing Brazilian beauties....after all- it's just a game.

Whoa! No need to scream. All I said was 'It's just a game'...

Today's Train of Thought- Hops and Hopper cars in the Big Easy; Dec 15th 2009

For all the 'old-world' charm that guidebooks praise the Crescent City for let it not be forgotten that even post-Katrina, the city of New Orleans is still a vital transportation crossroads, both by sea and by land. Here, on a sweltering June 2009 afternoon, a mixed freight bound for the New Orleans Public Belt yard with a NOPB crew and Kansas City Southern C44-9Ws #4597 and #4601 trundle past the old Jackson brewery. Railpictures.net contributor Jim O. also pointed out that the New Orleans streetcar runs parralell to the tracks here (seen to the immdeiate left of the #4597).

Today's Train of Thought: Warren's Got Himself A New Toy- Nov 3rd, 2009

In light of today's announcement from Berkshire-Hathaway, I thought Today's Train of Thought should focus on the BNSF. Here, a quartet of GE's led by C44-9W #5081 is photographed by railpictures.net contributor Joe Blackwell winding through the Abo Canyon on the former Santa Fe Clovis Subbdivision near Abo, NM with a lengthy cut of JB Hunt trailers in September 2009.