The owner of that track doesn't spend any time or money on maintenance .

The Cumberland mine railroad is a fine example of what happens when you start spending money on maintenance. This railroad can take a page out of that and do likewise

Seems like they have the same 'maintenance' program for their engines as they do their tracks; 'If it's not broke don't fix it!'

Get rid of the grass and there wont be any problems. EL&S is cheap not to spray there right-away, you either pay for spray or pay for fuel!!!

Lovely old cemetery. nicely maintained. love the trains along side too

Hello Jason, I'm in Iron Mountain all week. I'm from Rochester Hills Michigan. I hope to meet you. I enjoy your videos and your parrots. Congratulations on your 10000.

Love to count cars and see multiple variations of cargo😊

Thanks for taking a puddle splash for us Jason. 👍🏻

That locomotive IS LEANING!

The owners of this railroad have been neglecting the track and equipment for years. Every time I go up there, it looks worse and worse.

Gosh I love hearing those turbos ❤

That was awesome 😊🎉

No sand and wet vegetation means a lot of slipping.

That's a 3 or 4 engine train for an Alco. WET, Wheel slip. That's all it is. I've seen the dop the cars and go up the tracks with the engine and sand everything. They may have no sand either.

Sounds like my vacuum cleaner😮 its not peaceful for the residents of the graveyard!

Happy Sunday Jason God bless

They'll spend hours trying to drag too much train instead of dragging it in two parts. What is the grade there?

Wet rails make a big diff.

Wet rail, rail with grass on it, tree sap, and or no sand (improperly serviced).

I think he backed up to sand the rails. We did that a lot on the ACR.

Hi Jason, I enjoy your videos. I notice an LP SmartSide ad at the beginning of this one 😂😂. People are watching!!

We see this on Tehachapi, that's an RBD train ie "runs better downhill".

Moisture on the rails, wheel slippage, mite be out of sand and MOW crew needs to cut grass between rails, if the wheels slip badly they leave blue streaks on the rails and make a high pitch whistle or squeal. there hows that?

Well, your long journey to 100k is finally complete and you get your silver play button!

Wet rail and no sand .

ELS seems to have a bad habit of running their locomotives into the ground. If ELS is so short of motive power, maybe they should take a page out of the Lake State Railway's playbook down on the Alpena branch in lower Michigan, where the LSRC use road slugs with traction motors that draw power from a locomotive's prime mover to provide additional tractive effort to haul heavy trains loaded with aggregate, gypsum or cement products. ELS has plenty of mothballed locomotives stored at their Wells facility that might be suitable for conversion to road slugs-- might as well make do with what they have on hand if they don't want to spend more to lease more locomotives.

I'm all set with a bucket of popcorn.This is going to be interesting.

it looks like they are out of sand on a slick track

That seems to be a very nice cemetery, it looks like everyone’s dieing to get in there. Congrats on the 100000 subs Jason.

OH, WOW! Seems like a huge electrical issue, alternator/generator/traction motors, maybe even a turbo issue. And no power up north to bail them out🤔❔ What a sorry state of a railroad 🤔☹😤😢😭😵😨😱❗

When they were trying to push the loads yesterday that would be the same direction the engine would be running as it is now. Looks like the problem is more than the sand. Maybe traction motor(s).

Definitely something is wrong with 503, maybe a traction motor is bad or something else electrical with it. Obviously the diesel is running okay. Could it be that the generator is going bad?

There sure is something wrong with the engine. Sounds like a bad turbo.

Engine sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Sounds like a burned out traction motor. Thanks Jason

Definitely something is wrong with the locomotive and still notched up!!! Sad to see them with so few locomotives and struggling with another locomotive! Seems like they are shutting the Locomotive off and leaving town! Thanks for the coverage! Safe travels to Iowa🙏🤲

If the unit is slipping, no point in getting more throttle. That may damage wheels as well as rail. If it will hold the rail at 2 or 3 mph, stay there until your situation improves ( grade ?? ).

Wet rails and 1 engine doesn't cut it on a grade. He probably went back n forth sanding the rails before he got traction.

Sunday at 3:40pm in Southern Ontario. J Good catch. Greg. 😊.

Definitely something wrong with the train not being able to climb iron mountain

Engine and turbo look and sound fine. Dragging brakes? Lack of sand with all that vegetation lying around? Money needs to be spent rather than leaving the Yorkshireman in charge of spending....

Grab a shot of that gondola !! That was cool!!

good train video

For some reason the traction motors weren’t getting the juice to run them

The conductor should be at the back, protecting the shove move. Might be a sticking brake, too.

Good video! Right before they stopped and tied down, it sounded like they were getting a lot of wheel slip. I don’t know if that’s a mechanical issue or they were out of sand. Definitely wet rail and probably a lot of wet foliage on the rail as well. I would think that 18 loads would be a piece of cake for them. They were definitely in run 8 at times, then the engineer would back it off. Probably had his ammeter buried at times, so backed off? It didn’t sound like wheel slip all the times he backed off?!

Maybe their sanders are empty. Weeds and water are slippery.

It has dropped its load. He's in number 6 still struggling .

No money for anything at ELS. What will L.P. do if the Smart siding train gets stopped by an underperforming railroad company. Somebody with super deep pockets needs to step in and just take over. Great video of a failing company. Maybe even Wisconsin and Michigan can fund it.

Wet rails, high wet grass, no sand?

Like I said they need to purchase a bigger locomotive like an SD 70 Mack

Turbocharger sounds like it is going bad.

Wet wheels or bad traction motors….or even the generator is shot…..

Maybe slick rail combined with vegetation on the rails?

I love the "disney" car as you call it. Someone obviously has too much time on their hands.

Sounds to me the locomotive isn't loading properly more trouble some to diagnose than not loading at all..meaning its sending power to the traction motors but not as it should

Nice video, by chance, have you ever caught the High Hood unit ELS has? I saw it tied down in Escanaba last year.

I got a feeling Jaw Tooth is watching this somewhere.

You can hear the traction motors. That's the noise you hear

I also will be in Iron Mountain next Tuesday for a couple weeks.

If you didn't see the locomotive in the cemetery you'd probably swear it was a landscape crew working on Mowing and weed trimming. Then it almost starts to sound like a Mixmaster. Independent Locomotive Services should have a few more SD40s in stock but it would probably take a week to get there from Minnesota it was just the way @12:30 how's the speed just suddenly disappears. EI. EI. Oh forget it

They better do something or the railroad will lose the customer to trucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where is your scanner? Probably had your answer there? Wet wood wet rails old engine Alter metal loads with water. Maybe they blew a traction motor, .

No money for sand. That SD40-2 Shouldn't have a problem pulling that train.

Wow that rail is all whoopity whoopity

The tracks look a little warped and rough in that area

that's a nice camera you have there Jason.

The plow blade on the rear of the loco shakes the water droplets off the weeds n grass right onto the top of the rail and the leading trucks are slipping. Probably ran out of traction sand thursday already.

UUUUGH!!! the sound of that engine cut off and winding down.........and NOICE they broke the train to allow traffic to pass.....

They might be out of sand. Engine seems to do okay on the level and downhill, but wheels might be slipping when they are going uphill. Short heavy train doesn't helping either.

He thought he could, but he was wrong!

Looks like maybe scrap metal in some of the gons. You could see it in the last one.

You don't think all that lumber is extremely heavy?

impressive graffitti

This old horse ain't what she used to be

crazy never seen that before.

503 can't climb the grade oh boy the last thing ELS needs is another downed locomotive hopefully 503 isn't breaking down.

Maybe Mr retired bsnf is broken lol

Any idea what all the wood is for?

It time for repair great video thanks Jason

Wasn't this locomotive worked on a few months back

Wet rail is bad, but if there's not much traffic the rails might have some rust which makes an excellent polishing compound to make the rails even more slick. At 12:00 What is the gradient on that stretch of track? It is very relevant to the crew on such a lousy evening I take it that the crew outlawed at 6pm Friday so they had to leave the train there

Hi Jason poor 503 I noticed the blue boxcars from the view in the cemetery, any idea what the are doing their, noticed it looked like a door was either open or off. Thanks

they need a DPU is what they need.

It could be a combination of things, it seems like the engine is surging at higher load, that happens a lot on these older sd40s, the sd60s not so mucn.

(4:28) "Have you no respect for the dead, my son!?" HAW-HAW! (That was a good one, wasn't it?) Well.......... all I can say is, I hope they bury me by the tracks......... Thanks for the video.

Definitely out of sand with all the wet grass and wet rails. Maybe do some tie replacements to get the speed up could help some as well.18 loaded cars roughly 2,340 tons for that SD should be no issue unless out of sand. Even though class 1’s can have the same problem on the main lines.

I sospect wet rail with grass and weeds.

Sounds and looks like a traction motor locked up.

Hey Jason when are they gonna weed spray the tracks do u think it’s that time of the year?

Shop time track motor died

wonder what grade this track is...

They need more power instead dragging that many cars with 1 locomotive.

Fix what ya got. Lease until it's done. What a mickey mouse railroad.

Have you ever find out what the problem was with that Train? Maybe blocked brakes or somthing?

I hope there is no ash borer in that cargo.

Something is definitely wrong with that engine

Looks like the engine is running on a single traction motor or the airhose is not release all of the breaks on the cars, prevent it from pulling.

All that pulp wood should’ve been on the pin

Something seriously wrong. A SD-40-2 should been having no trouble with a train of this length.