Stranded in the rain on the CNO&TP at Norwood Ky

[E.M. Bell]

Saturday April 18th, Carmon and myself headed South to spend some time shooting the construction project (the new Double track) between CP Woods and CP Grove, that I shared with the group a week or so ago.  We did manage to shoot a few more places while on the road, and before we had some trouble at Norwood KY.

The morning dawned soggy to say the least. We fought the rain and storms off and on all day, but the afternoon would bring a little sun. The nasty weather once again helped a few times, letting me shooting some Northbounds in a few locations, and the rain is always nice.. On the way home, we stopped at Norwood to shoot a few with the endangered  signals, and that is where the fuel pump on our Ford Explorer decided to fail. What had been a good day ended with us sitting on the side of the road for almost 4 hours until Jreb member Adam Wells came to rescue us!

Normally, being stranded is not a good thing (like the time we broke down in the middle of a Illinois cornfield 2 years ago chasing the UP 844) but this time, at least we were right next to the NS mainline. While waiting for Adam to come pick us up, NS ran 10 or so trains and that kept us busy while we waited. The next day was spent going back down there and loading up our dead vehicle on the trailer and hauling it back home for repairs.

Here are a few shots from the day.  The entire set can be found at this link >>>  http://www.pbase.com/kd4jsl/cs2nd13eb

The first shot of the day...NS 216 is still almost 3/4 of a mile away, seen passing through downtown Waynesburg KY in the morning fog.


Northbound 224 is down to a crawl as the long train climbs Norwood Hill, see here passing under the signals at "Cumberland Chair" on the North side of Somerset. The new aluminum cantilever with new signals and the PTC antenna look new, shiny, and out of place..unlike the soot stained steel holding the searchlights above the mainline.


Southbound 229, the hottest train on the CNO&TP, races South through a strong thunderstorm at Norwood Ky.  You can see the new "beanpole" signal mast that have been installed here, ready to be cut in during the next couple of months.


After getting the now dead Explorer safley off the road and waiting for our ride home to get to us, I made the best use of time that I could. Here is Northbound Triplecrown 264, struggling to get its 150 loads back on the move after "Otto" decided to stop them on Norwood Hill for a meet. You might think those roadrailers are not all that heavy, but those 3 GE's had a time getting the train moving from a dead stop on that hill.


A BNSF leader brings train 175 around "Fairy Curve" at Norwood, with a little bit of sun now showing.

[thpbears]

Those are some nice shots EM. If you had to get stranded at least it was beside the Main.