Last Friday a Heads Up was been posted for the NS 955 OCS deadhead from Altoona to Chicago. I called my mom and told her to have my dad get his stuff packed for an overnight trip. I also said for him take his Passport, which I had paid for as a birthday gift. Saturday (August 22) I was assigned an early dayrun on the Rt 27 bus that got off at 12:16 here in Cincinnati Ohio. I slept through all but the last layover at which point I called my dad. I estimated that if everything went right we could catch the NS train. What was more important, since we would only be an hour away we could finally take a trip to Canada and let my dad use the passport that had been burning hole in his pocket for over a week. I got socked by traffic just trying to leave Cincinnati then received more delay since my mom made a homemade pizza, delicious but certainly not quick train chasing food. I let my dad drive so I would not jeopardize my CDL. I estimated from the heads up of trainorders.com members where we might catch the train. I guessed Delta Ohio, where the DT&I crosses the long straight portion of the NYC that the jet powered RDC tested on. It was a good guess.
Delta is significant in that Henry Ford wanted to build the Malinta Cut-Off for his Detroit Toledo and Ironton Railroad. The DT&I would have to cross both the New York Central and the Wabash at grade at Delta. The owners of the NYC would not allow for a diamond crossing to be laid, keep in mind this is in the early twenties. Henry Ford ordered that the DT&I be built over the Wabash, NYC and US 20 (S to N) and that the bridge across the NYC be built to minimum clearance so that the NYC would have to undercut any time they wanted to improve things or if they needed to run larger cars.
The interchange with the NYC was scarce at Delta but the interchange with the Wabash remained the bussiest interchange on the railroad with the most cars exchanged right up to the end of the DT&I (second was Glen Jean on the N&W Columbus Dist). Of course the Wabash and it's tracks are gone, the DT&I was merged into Grand Trunk Western which became part of Canadian National after CN was no longer a crown corporation of Canada. What was left of the DT&I south of Diann Tower (Ann Arbor crossing) was then sold to RailTex who was bought out by RailAmerica and operated it as Indiana and Ohio. The NYC became Penn Central then Conrail and is now NS.
That may be a bit more history then you needed for the caption but I like getting the Fs in notable places, since we all know what they look like and have hopefully seen them in person.
1) NS 955 with the DT&I bridge above it on the background.
2) NS 955 cmae through here around 6:00 pm. We got a small hole int he clouds just for this.
Jim