Eastern KY coal for Central KY power

[E.M. Bell]

One of the more interesting NS moves on the 1st District of the CNO&TP is the 70K, Brown Coal train. 70K originates on the CSX off the EK Sub, and moves to Winchester KY (Patio) where it is handed off the RJC. Corman takes the train to Lexington, and hands it off to a NS crew, for delivery to the Kentucky Utilities E.W. Brown power plant near Burgin KY.

While a straight shot for CSX and RJC, once the NS gets it, they have a chore to get the train to the power plant. NS moves the train around 25 miles South from Lexington, but has to make a drawn out run around move to get the power on the South end in Lexington, they keep the single track tied up for a while working the plant, and then have to run around the empties to come back North AND run the power back around again at Lexington to give it back to the RJC...yall get all of that?

Sunday, April 17th, Carmon and myself where out bumming around when we heard the North End dispatcher talking to 70K, and we headed for the 1st district to get a few shots as they worked the plant. It seems like this train "usually" shows up after dark, so this was a good catch for us (even IF it had CSX power)

Larger versions of these can be found at http://www.pbase.com/kd4jsl/gallery/nscs1eb

After dropping the conductor off at the plant switch, the engineer is struggling to get the 70 loads moving again, fighting the grade out of the KY River Valley.



Kentucky Utilities has a fleet of their own hoppers, like this KUCX load.



Once the rear end clears the lower yard switch, they start shoving back into the plant. At this point, the train is in a swag, with the switch being at the bottom. Its a steep shove up into the plant.



The power is working hard as they clear the mainline. The dispatcher will have Southbound 375 "ease around" and line the mainline switch back, saving 70K's conductor a long walk.



About 30 mins later, we caught the 375 as they crawled up the hill through Burgin,KY

[stillbre]

Nice shots there Emmett.  I've been down there to check out Brown on a couple of occasions but never had the chance to catch a train there.
I got the chance to watch a NS 750 shove in and begin unloading down in Belmont NC this afternoon.  These trains come across the S-Line out of Asheville to Salisbury before turning south.  They run right through Belmont to run around the train about 10 miles south in Gastonia.  Today's train had three horse head Dash-9s running elephant style so when they pulled back to Belmont they were running long hood forward.  This train usually runs with TopGons or other unit train gons but today it had those new Johnstown America triple hoppers built in Roanoke.  After arriving at the plant in Belmont the NS power was taken off and Duke Power's own center cab GE took over shoving cuts of about 20-30 cars through the rotary dumper.