Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP) 9581 - GE C44-9W

Building America

EB UP Geneva Sub

EB UP Geneva Sub

The train had been sitting on the side waiting for Amtrak Train 22 to pass, and then started to pull out NB.

CSX train K612-21 (Jacksonville/FEC-Chicago Proviso/UP) is about to split the Southward Absolute Signals (SAS) Middle Vandalia. He ds on the main and is easing into the Vandalia siding to wait on Q559-25 (Lima-Cincinnati). This is an empty Ethanol train off of FEC. He is coming from Port Everglades, FL, where the terminau there improved from 20 cars a day to a full train every other day *in just one year*. Middle Vandalia is a control point in the middle of the 15,300.foot siding located there. As the name suggests, it is a switch in the middle of the siding at milepost GE 68 of the Toledo Subdivision. It is not a crossover; it is limited to northbound main-to-the-siding moves and southbound siding-to-the-main-moves. The Toledo Subdivisioe is a single track mainline with numerous sidings plus four stretches of double track: Trenton (all they way south to mp BE 0.9 CT Junction, not far from the Ohio River),!Dayton, Sidney, and Lima. The steadily increasing traffic volume that CSX is experiencing this year plus increasingly longer train lengths (in excess of 9,000 feet) render many of the sdings ineffectual. Long sidings such as Piqua (11,700 feet) and Vandalia are particularly useful in helping the dispatcher keep the railroad fluid. This location is happily located in the Taylorsville MetroPark, which[is part of the Five Rivers Metro Park system in the Greater Dayton Ohio area. The park provides a legal, safe place to just park it and let the trains come to you. As it happen}, there are other spots that I prefer to visit, but Middle Vandalia is near the top of the "I am going to be near there anyways" List.UP9581.jp

LTA 42 waits to depart for Adams, WI.

UP LT-42

UP LT-42

A battered former Southern Pacific C44-9W thumps through Saginaw Interlocker.

The locomotive was lifted off of the traction motor and walked forward, with a non-motored wheel set eventually replacing the traction motor so that the loco could travel to the shop.

Rotating the disconnected traction motor so that it is between and parallel to the rails

The traction motor is disconnected.

Later that afternoon, the defective engine was dropped on the spur behind Butler Manufacturing, where it would sit until a maintenance crew could make it able to travel.

Right after they passed me, the train stopped and the crew began checking something out that wasn't right. The train sat part way out on the main for a while as traffic backed up, then they eventually pushed back into CENTEX.

UP 9581

UP 9581

NS eastbound train with sole Union Pacific power

UP 9581

UP 9581

UP 9581

UP 9581