All American Diesel in Canada

In Spring 1991, I sometimes would hop on my bike and race to the nearby CSX tracks when I heard a train approaching my hometown. One morning, I caught a huge four-diesel mixed freight, which was one of the better catches I have ever had.

Fast forward a few decades.

A great surprise awaited me the other day when I visited the Chesapeake & Ohio Canadian Division Facebook group. It turns out, one of the photos I took that spring day had much more historic significance than I had imagined.

This is a shot of GP38-2 2002, repatched for CSX but previously bearing the B&O markings on the side of its hood. This unit, which was originally B&O 3802, was like any other GP38 that were used almost exclusively on this rail line between Sarnia and Chatham in the 1990s.

But this unit, it turns out, has been preserved at the Baltimore & Ohio museum in Baltimore, Maryland because it is historically significant. There was a reminder stenciled onto the side of this unit, which read "Do Not Dismantle. On release from service, hold for shipment to B&O Museum via Locust Point, Baltimore."

The stencil was applied in 1992, which meant my photo was taken the year before the locomotive was officially tabbed for the museum. But the question is, why was this unit designated to be saved?

Upon reading about this unit's story on the museum's website, I was surprised to read that this locomotive was dubbed the All American Diesel by Trains Magazine in 1982. At the time it was chosen, this locomotive was already in Chessie paint. It turns out, despite the patch being applied to this unit in 1992, this locomotive wasn't retired from service until 2000. Not a bad return for a diesel manufactured in 1967.

You can see lots of photos of this unit and the patch at the C&O Canadian Facebook group (see link above), which I have found to be a fascinating treasure trove of photos and information about a largely forgotten rail network in Southwestern Ontario. You can also see what this unit looks like fully restored today on the B&O Museum's 3802 Flikr page.

What makes this even better for me was I caught this unit on a train with four diesels. This was the one and only time I ever saw four units leading a train on this line. Usually, CSX ran two geeps together, with the long hoods connected together.

This has always been one of my favourite railway photos. Now that I know the story behind this unit, it makes this image all the more special. It also makes me feel old to know that an engine I caught is now a museum piece.

OTHER NEWS

Over at Trackside Treasure, blogger Eric Gagnon has posted about the fascinating Sclair covered hoppers that were once common around Sarnia and elsewhere. Eric was nice enough to include a link to an older Beachburg Sub post that included a shot I took of the Sclair hoppers in Corunna. I found one other shot of a Sclair hopper, taken in 1992 that I thought I would share. This car is parked on a spur serving a plastics plant near Corunna. That maroon car to the left is a Dupont hopper. The former Dupont plant, now owned by Nova Chemicals, is located in Corunna on the CSX Sarnia Sub.

The changing colours on the Sarnia Sub

Railways don't change their image all that often. Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and CN are good examples of railways whose diesels have looked remarkably consistent over the last twenty years. CN's last major change occurred when it ditched its safety scheme for the CN North America scheme, which quickly gave way to the current CN look, complete with web address beneath the wet noodle. One railway that has bucked this trend is CSX. This railway, which was a creation of a number of diverse railways, has always been colourful, particularly on its oftentimes orphan Sarnia Subdivision. 

Above: Chessie System quadruple header makes it way through Corunna en route to Sarnia in Spring 1991. The railway ran the vast majority of its manifest freights with two GP38-2s at this time.

For years following the merger between the Seaboard System and Chessie System (which were in turn the result of the merging of a number of smaller railways), the GP38s on the CSX Sarnia Subdivision wore mainly Chessie System colours, with the yellow, orange and vermillion blue, although it often looked more like black to me. This was likely the result of the fact that the Sarnia Sub was formerly a C&O line. The above photo shows the rare combination of four Chessie diesels, some still bearing the markings of their original railway on the side of the hoods. You can see the B&O marking on the final GP38 in the above shot. In 1992 onward, those cab markings were removed in favour of a smaller "CSXT" marking, which was likely the precursor to being repainted in CSX's original grey and blue scheme.

One exception in the 1980s and the early 1990s was a scattering of units still painted in the B&O and C&O blue scheme. You can read the story of the below B&O unit here. A reader noted in that post that GP38-2 2100 was also a frequent presence on Chessie's Windsor operations around the same time. How this unit escaped repainting is an interesting question. One explanation is that CSX's Canadian operations were at the edge of the railway's network and often lagged behind the rest of the network in appearance.

Above: B&O GP38-2 2100 crosses Hill St. in Corunna in the early 1990s

The early 1990s brought changes to the sub as the first of the GP38s began to appear in CSX colours. They were often paired with Chessie units. Notice how the fuel tank and trucks were repainted along with the rest of the unit in the shot below.

There's no question that CSX is a strange name for a railway, although it seemed less odd after Burlington Northern Santa Fe morphed into BNSF. I read about the origin of the CSX name. The C in CSX stands for Chessie System while the S stands for the Seaboard System. The X is the symbol of the merger and the fact that the combined entity was obviously much larger and more dynamic than its predecessors. That was the rationale at the time, anyway.

Above: CSX GP38-2 2013 sits on an idle freight train near St. Clair Blvd. in Corunna in Spring 1991

In about 1993, a single unit appeared on the subdivision with a yellow stripe added (GP38 2006). This unit was a tough one to capture in a photo. I recall chasing this unit for months before I finally caught up with it around sunset near the CSX Clifford Street rail yard in Sarnia. There was a span of three to four years where the old Chessie units continued to work the sub alongside the newly painted CSX units, making for colourful consists.

Above: CSX GP38-2 2006 near the Clifford St. station in Sarnia in July 1993. This was the first diesel on the Sarnia Sub to wear the newer CSX scheme.

Following this change of paint scheme, most units on the sub looked very much like GP38 2006 until CSX decided to make a wholesale change, going from grey units with blue and yellow trim to blue units with yellow trim. I'm not sure when this change happened, since I have not lived in this area for years and have only been in the habit of photographing trains on this sub very recently. When CSX began to adopt a new colour scheme, the essential design of the scheme remained the same, as did the logo. Last year, on a visit to the Sarnia area in October, I caught a glimpse of a few geeps in the blue and yellow colour livery.

Above: October 2013 on the Sarnia Sub near Clifford St. in Sarnia as two GP38-2s in the blue paint scheme grind to a stop. Note the difference in the background from the 1993 photo above. Gone are the storage tanks, replaced by a gravel dock on the river.

The latest version of the CSX logo has been rolled out since last year, with a boxcar design being added around the CSX script. I have read some negative comments about the new boxcar logo, since boxcars aren't exactly the most popular freight cars on North American railways anymore. Some have suggested the new logo symbolizes container traffic. Either way, it's changed. I caught a unit on the Sarnia Sub with the new logo on Dec. 23rd. The engineer was kind enough to give me a wave as he brought his unit to a stop. Notice some of the modifications on the unit including ditch lights, the removal of lights next to the top number boards and what I am assuming are air conditioning units on top of the cab.

Above: GP38-2 2697 pulls into the Clifford St. yard in Sarnia on Dec. 23, 2013. The "boxcar" CSX logo is the latest livery for the railway.

Despite the changes that the diesels have undergone on the sub in the last 25 years, the one thing that has remained the same is the type of engine used. Ever since I can remember watching trains on this sub, the unit of choice has been the GP38-2. It's been the one constant on a railway line that has sported many colours over the years.

Cabooses on the CSX Sarnia Sub

CSX Transportation's Sarnia Subdivision was a fascinating anomaly in the 1990s for a number of reasons, including its continuing use of Chessie System painted GP38s well past the creation of CSX. This sub also hosted a B&O painted GP38 for a few years in the early 1990s and had no signalling equipment for much of its Chatham-Sarnia line. Another strange quirk that characterized this line was the use of Chessie System-painted cabooses into the early to mid 1990s, including a bay-window caboose.

Of course, a number of  railways continued to use cabooses into the early 1990s, so I am not suggesting that this sub was the last surviving rail line to use these cars. However, I am guessing that it was among one of the last lines to use them. In the area where I watched trains, CN had long since stopped using its trademark red cabooses by the early 1990s in and around Sarnia, including its branch line that passed by Corunna's eastern town limits.

The most commonly used type of crew car on the CSX Sarnia line was top-mounted cupola style car like C&O 103144. I likely snapped this photo in the summer of 1992, although this photo was not dated. I missed the head-end of this train, but I arrived in time to catch a few interesting cars and this caboose. You will notice that it's hitched to an autorack, which was a common site on this subdivision up until the mid-1990s when this traffic began to disappear. I mention this because it makes the cupola on the caboose useless when you can't see anything beyond the next car in the consist. However, by the 1990s, the cupola was obviously not a key component of this car.

I did a little research online to see whatever happened to this car and found nothing. Unfortunately, Chessie's history is hard to track online, especially when it comes to this forgotten subdivision. 

The above photo was taken in a new subdivision, which gave me a new vantage point to watch trains on this line. Before this subdivision was built, the area was forest near the edge of town.

The photo below was taken in the spring of 1991 at the St. Clair Boulevard grade crossing on the outer southern edge of the town. This bay window crew car is, to my knowledge, still on this sub and in Port Huron, Michigan as a shoving car or safety cab, depending on what term you prefer. You can see what the car looks like now in this photo from RailPictures.net. I prefer to remember it as it was back in the spring of '91, when it was still in use as a crew car. What a beauty!

This was the shot I took as it approached the crossing at the tail end of a manifest freight. The bay window car is hitched to an ex-Louisville & Nashville hi-cube box car, which likely carried auto parts. This was another common site on this line in the 1990s until this traffic largely dried up. 

I am looking forward to visiting family in the Sarnia area later this summer. I am hoping to catch a train on the sub, although I doubt I'll see the variety that I saw back in the day.

Chasing a ghost from the B&O

As I mentioned previously, I grew up along CSX's Sarnia subdivision between Chatham, Ont. and Sarnia, Ont. The line was a throwback in many ways, which you can read about in this post. The most obvious throwback on the Sarnia sub was the continuing use of Chessie System-painted geeps (mainly GP-38s) well into the 1990s. This seemed odd to me since the merger forming CSX between Chessie System and Seaboard System was quite a speck in the rear-view mirror by the mid 1990s.

This sub was in many respects an orphan, being cut off from the remainder of the CSX network. I've been told this was the reason why the motive power on this sub continued to sport Chessie colours long after most of CSX's diesels were repainted in the initial grey and blue CSX paint scheme.

Well, seeing Chessie painted locomotives is one thing, but seeing a Baltimore & Ohio-painted geep? In the 1990s?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but this was what happened one summer in the early 1990s when this ghost of railroading past made its way onto the Sarnia sub. I remember how strange it seemed to be seeing the dark blue geep puttering up and down the line. The last time I had seen a B&O geep was in the mid-1980s when I was in grade school and even then I knew that the B&O was long gone.

So one summer, I began my quest to catch up with this engine and snap a photo of it. The problem was, being too young to drive, my sole means of catching up to trains was to hop on my bike and race down to the St. Clair Boulevard crossing, which was about five minutes from my house. I remember this engine teasing me. I would see it from time to time when I was being driven around and didn't have a camera. I also remember biking around Corunna (my hometown) and hearing a train coming only to realize I didn't have my camera on me. That B&O geep was an elusive subject to capture.

So one afternoon as I was biking around Corunna near one of our main roads, Hill Street, I could hear the sound of an engine horn. The B&O geep was at the head of the consist, complete with the Capitol Building logo on the front of the hood. As luck would have it, I had my camera. Even more exciting, I just so happened to be in a great spot to capture the engine, very close to the tracks. My moment had finally arrived.

As the train approached, I set up my camera and watched it approach through the camera lens. It crawled closer and closer, finally relenting to a photo, I thought. Just as the unit began to fill my frame, preening for a photo, some kid on a bike raced right into the middle of my frame, right as I clicked the button to snap a frame.

This was long before the term photobomb meant anything. I was crushed. I quickly recovered and took this shot (below).

This going away shot was all I could get after I wound the camera's film and framed the locomotive properly. I didn't date the original print, but I am assuming it was taken around 1991 or 1992.

I remember looking at that ruined photo in my collection for years, always cursing that dumb kid in the middle of the frame, who was scowling at me and wondering what the hell I was doing taking his photo. In disgust, I threw away the print. Years later, I threw away all my reels of film. To this day, I still can't believe how stupid those two decisions were.

So, this is the only shot I ever captured of CSX 2100, still painted in the old B&O colours. At least it makes a good story. Sigh.