Hello everyone. On Tuesday, June 18th, I ventured back on up to the Fostoria Iron Triangle Railpark in Fostoria, Ohio, for my first trip to the Iron Triangle since January of this year. Today's video is railfanning action at the Iron Triangle in the last two hours of daylight, between 7 and 9 p.m. I was unable to come up earlier in the day as I had to work, but nevertheless I made the best of the evening, and what a busy evening it was.
The weather this evening of railfanning was hot and so were the rails. In the span of two hours, I saw a total of eight trains; 7 CSX and one Norfolk Southern. These were the busiest hours of railfanning at the Iron Triangle I had seen in years, almost reminiscent of mid-2010s. Back in the mid-2010s, Fostoria would see on average four trains an hour at a given point in the day, and this day saw four trains in each of the two hours there. One interesting difference between this evening and a typical evening a decade ago is the disparity between the two railroads. As I mentioned, NS only had one train roll on through this evening in contrast to the CSX seven.
A pair of westbound CSX intermodal trains on the Willard Subdivision kicked off this railfanning session, followed up with an eastbound manifest train. This eastbound manifest train was (I believe) M566 to Cleveland and featured a rare GATX "classroom" car consist of a tanker car and two boxcars. I suppose these GATX cars are the equivalent of the CSX Safety Train and they certainly stand out with the writing on the side of the cars to signify these special cars are not for regular service. After the manifest went through, the Norfolk Southern grain train with a Dash-9 duo came on through with the long grain train that waited nearly 40 minutes before it could leave due to the heavy traffic on the Willard Subdivision.
Following the grain train, the catch of the evening showed up. The best catch of the day was CSX manifest M367 featuring an SD70MAC leader meeting an eastbound intermodal train. Even better, today's M367 featured a rather uncommon Chicago North Western (CNW) boxcar, still in good condition. To finish off the day, CSX sent two more westbound trains; one intermodal, and manifest M369 to Chicago. These seven trains on the Willard Subdivision were the most I had seen on this line at a given time in years, and I surely hope this will be a sign of good things to come here at the Fostoria Iron Triangle. In other words, hopefully there will be more train traffic here in the near and far future!
Be sure to look out for my next video from the Iron Triangle, which will feature a full day of railfanning action on next day of railfanning here in Fostoria. Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!
-N&W475.