Fostoria Trip

[ChessieForever]

After driving nearly 800 miles for my yearly trek to Fostoria, guess when I arrived? How about 12 hours after Q149 had their train on the ground in Suman Indiana!!! I had this trip planned for months, and Q149 just had to go on the ground the afternoon before my 0600 arrival time. Knowing what had already happened prior to my arrival, there was no turning back as I was still determined to make this trip. To put it mildy, it will be one trip I'll never forget.

For the first 24 hours the only trains running on the B&O west of Fostoria were those making the turn, coming and going, at Deshler. That is except for one set of grain trains that interchange at Hamler. Spending 31 non stop hours there, I saw absoultely no eastbound trains from Chicago/Garrett, but westbound intermodals began running by daylight the second day, most of them running as "X" trains.

For the first time EVER, the entire overnight hours was spent at Columbus Avenue, instead of the usual running back and forth many times in the night, so as not to miss one single train. All of this said, and to prove my point that you can not beat Fostoria for seeing the most trains of any other place in the area, and despite the fact that the "B&O" was basically shut down my entire time there, I still recorded 96 train movements in 31 hours, with 57 trains on CSX and 39 trains on NS. Total locomotives sighted, not including anything seen more than once in this time period, totaled an even 100 on CSX, and 66 on NS. Also for the first time EVER on my visits there, every train on CSX had all CSX power. No lease units, no foreign units. On NS, of the 66 locomotives sighted, 57 were NS, 6 were UP, 1 BNSF, and 2 lease units, I GMTX and 1 CEFX.

While all of this sounds pretty decent, it is not when compared to previous trips where anywhere from 120 to 148 trains have been sighted in a 30 hour period, totalling as many as 300 locomotive sightings. All I can say is, I still saw far more trains and locomotives in 31 hours than I would have in a full month back home.

[ConrailForever]

That's just some major bad luck, but at least you were getting something.

[bdconrail29]

Remember the big power-outage due to the grid failure in New York in August 2003? Well, I was at an all-nighter at Oak Harbor and the line shut down 10-3am. Then the traffic really let loose, but by then I was so burned out and tired I left at 6am. Just major bad luck like Cody said.