3 Months of the Odd & the Orange on the Louisville District

[E.M. Bell]

Here is another round of "Catch Up" stuff from me, and for those that are probably getting tired of these leftovers, don't fret, this will be it for a few weeks!  I am scraping the bottom of the never ending barrel of images for the first time this year, just in-time for a 5 day 4 State road-trip that will get me backed up...again..

Here are a few odds and ends from the Louisville District stretching from April to June...including a heapin helping of big Orange EMD's, new NS SD70Ace's, and broke down GE (Not really news there) and a few other goodies..  If the samples here don't make your eyeballs bleed, then torture yourself some more and see them all at this link>>>>>  http://www.pbase.com/kd4jsl/ns_ls_2014_eb

04/26/14 A faded BNSF SD70Mac leads NS 75J up the West slope of the Waddy (Ky) hill.  


04/26/14 A pair of Brand new NS SD70Ace's bring up the bottom of a Eastbound empty coal train at Waddy, KY....first trip!


05/04/14  Westbound NS 289 comes around Turtletree curve at Waddy with a NS OLS D9 and a CN draper taper GE leading a cut of brand spanking new BNSF SD70Ace's.  Those bright Orange things were on the way to Progress Rail in Mayfield, KY to have a P6 conversion made before being released to Uncle Warren.


05/14/14 Eastbound 111 slogs up Waddy hill, seen here passing a very dead GE that  failed on a steel train the night before.


"Fish Guts" NS 9576 was sitting in the house track at Waddy on Derby Sunday , after suffering from some sort of GE trouble while on 61A the night before. What ever the trouble was, it was bad enough to have to be set out. The airbrake compartment doors were open, but that was just where someone had been in there to cut the brakes out (you can see the dead engine feature is cut in). What you see in there is the KNORR CCB II EPCU (Electro-Pneumatic Control Unit) which is the modern, fancy air brake control valves. All of those modules replace what would have been even more components of the 26L brake (and even MORE on a 24RL or 14 ET or 8 or 6L ) and are much easier to service and replace. You can also see the "Locotrol" (DPU) module, relays to the event recorder ect and so on. I have done a lot of COTS on locomotives over the years, but nothing even close to this hot mess of modern design.


06/27/14 "This IS Railroading" A light rains falls as the searchlight signal at Salvisa, KY reflects off the coil steel on NS train 60R. This is what the railroad does best...moving millions of tons of raw material from supplier to consumer, not always fast, but reliably. If this steel train didn't run this night, how many tractor trailers would have been out on those wet roads to do the same job??