Modern Day F units on the Southern LL Branch

[E.M. Bell]

First off, you can add this to the "just when you think you have seen it all" department, and second, no this is not NS, but its got a LOT to do with the Southern.

Derby week in KY always means lots of interesting trains, NS and others. While I am not really a big fan of R.J. Corman for reasons which are mostly personal in nature, I have to say I always enjoy the show they put on around Derby time, mostly because of his set of former Southern Railway FP7's that are the power for his dinner train. The dinner train itself stays for the most part captive on his Bardstown KY line, except for Derby time.

This year, the train stayed in Lexington a week after the run for the roses, to be used for a couple of public dinner trips. These trips had been advertised to operate to Midway and and Frankfort KY, over the former L&N Old Road sub, BUT, that all changed. A mudlside and resulting track problems on the old road forced the RJC to make a last minute decision on Tuesday 05/10/11 to reroute to the former Southern "LL" branch, which Corman operates to Versailles KY. That line (which had been operated by my former employer, the Lexington & Ohio) is a marginally maintained, light railed, light traffic line...not exactly where you would expect to find a passenger train. This part of the line had not seen a revenue passenger train in over 70 years!

Tuesdays trip was a bit of history to say the least, and myself and a few others where on hand to photograph it. Little did we know that the trip scheduled for Thursday 05/12/11 would also use the branch. They only made a 8 mile round trip....VERY slowly, and given the lack of scenery on the part they operated, we found ourselves shooting at Viley road, where the line passes smack dab through the middle of the world famous Calumet horse farm. Tuesdays trip was made under cloudy skies and filtered light, while Thursday gave us lots of sun.

I created an album in our Pbase gallery just for these trips...It was exciting to be one of the few folks that got to shoot this very rare move. Please feel free to check out my results at the link. 

http://www.pbase.com/kd4jsl/gallery/rjclexdinner