Y
Yerry
Guest
On a trip on the Pere Marquette out of Chicago, I noticed some changes on the elevated stretch that once held the tracks of lines since abandoned. for quite a few years, nay, decades, it was all weeds and gravel, with the bridge sections still intact with three, four, five or even six sets of tracks on them.
Anyway, where the ex-NYC line passes by some (of many) housing developments, someone (some housing agency?) is digging building footings, oriented parallel to existing tracks, right into this abandoned ROW. My guess is that even with no horn blowing, a housing THAT cloise to the tracks has got be be incredibly noisy. I guess they could charge railfans extra.
When did the Roosevelt Road bridge (?) south of Union Station get flattened? Now there's a set of lights and bells. Kind of odd taht the oly RR grade crossing in several miles is in teh Amtrak yard.
This past weekend I stopped by Amtrak's Beech Grove shops. Notes:
HiLiner cars, which I understood to have been hocked for an Oklahoma loan and therefore parked on the curve (as you enter from the south on Emerson) are now GONE. In fact, all those tracks are empty, and i saw some track maintenance equipment on it. I didn't find the HiLiners (any type) anywhere else, though. Used to be a long string of Transition cars front-to-back with high and low ends matching each other, and other HiLiners behind them.
No Amfleet. What a surprise! Maybe a dozen or two of the Horizon cars, plus a Heritage smoker-dorm. A smattering of full baggage-mail cars are parked willy-nilly throughout the complex.
Parking lots have been repaved; one former storage area is now parking also. The guard shack made from two swallowtail observations is long-gone. I kind of liked that thing.
In the back (turn right off Emerson at the beginning of the yard), are several strings of Superliners awaiting repair. SOme are on shop trucks; there are far fewer cars with windows and such removed than in precious visits. Supers are by far the majority of the cars at Beech.
Continuing down Emerson is the Loco shop. No F40's anywhere. P42's were the only model in sight, and there weren't very many of them. Two former F40 tracks held orange ballast gondolas, most likely from track resurfacing. The two grey SP baggage cars were moved there too, and still look pretty good.
North of the buildings along Emerson are the very empty scrapping tracks. True to claims in Trains Magazine, "if it isn't going to run, it'll get cut up." The only thing there were two horribly burned and rusted P42's pushed quite a ways away from the road; one in far better shape than the other. I'm guessing these are the Bourbonnaise wreck locos-- I just don't recall anything else in that bad of shape.
Bloomington, Indiana has its CSX/Monon track removed. Floridian once stopped there. CSX now uses the Indiana RR (Ex-IC) since they had a bridge wash out some 10+ years ago. I have a few pictures of the old Monon "Stop if light goes out" crossing signals, taken when CSX started scrapping the line.
Anyway, where the ex-NYC line passes by some (of many) housing developments, someone (some housing agency?) is digging building footings, oriented parallel to existing tracks, right into this abandoned ROW. My guess is that even with no horn blowing, a housing THAT cloise to the tracks has got be be incredibly noisy. I guess they could charge railfans extra.
When did the Roosevelt Road bridge (?) south of Union Station get flattened? Now there's a set of lights and bells. Kind of odd taht the oly RR grade crossing in several miles is in teh Amtrak yard.
This past weekend I stopped by Amtrak's Beech Grove shops. Notes:
HiLiner cars, which I understood to have been hocked for an Oklahoma loan and therefore parked on the curve (as you enter from the south on Emerson) are now GONE. In fact, all those tracks are empty, and i saw some track maintenance equipment on it. I didn't find the HiLiners (any type) anywhere else, though. Used to be a long string of Transition cars front-to-back with high and low ends matching each other, and other HiLiners behind them.
No Amfleet. What a surprise! Maybe a dozen or two of the Horizon cars, plus a Heritage smoker-dorm. A smattering of full baggage-mail cars are parked willy-nilly throughout the complex.
Parking lots have been repaved; one former storage area is now parking also. The guard shack made from two swallowtail observations is long-gone. I kind of liked that thing.
In the back (turn right off Emerson at the beginning of the yard), are several strings of Superliners awaiting repair. SOme are on shop trucks; there are far fewer cars with windows and such removed than in precious visits. Supers are by far the majority of the cars at Beech.
Continuing down Emerson is the Loco shop. No F40's anywhere. P42's were the only model in sight, and there weren't very many of them. Two former F40 tracks held orange ballast gondolas, most likely from track resurfacing. The two grey SP baggage cars were moved there too, and still look pretty good.
North of the buildings along Emerson are the very empty scrapping tracks. True to claims in Trains Magazine, "if it isn't going to run, it'll get cut up." The only thing there were two horribly burned and rusted P42's pushed quite a ways away from the road; one in far better shape than the other. I'm guessing these are the Bourbonnaise wreck locos-- I just don't recall anything else in that bad of shape.
Bloomington, Indiana has its CSX/Monon track removed. Floridian once stopped there. CSX now uses the Indiana RR (Ex-IC) since they had a bridge wash out some 10+ years ago. I have a few pictures of the old Monon "Stop if light goes out" crossing signals, taken when CSX started scrapping the line.
