In this weeks Saturday Infrared photo, I caught the CSX Chesapeake & Ohio Heritage unit 1869 as it led CSX M500 at Howell Yard in Evansville, Indiana on September 28th, 2023, as it headed north on the Evansville Terminal Subdivision. This was the fifth CSX Heritage Unit I’ve caught of the six they’ve released. Now I am waiting for the L&N unit to get close to me!

I really didn’t expect to catch this unit as it was supposed to pass through yesterday during the late afternoon, but they ran into problems with their DPU at Guthrie, Ky and had to leave their train there and run to Casky Yard in Hopkinsville, Ky for a replacement. All said and done the train passed through my area in the dead of night.

I got a heads up from a friend the next morning that it was still at Howell and a new crew was starting to do their drop off and pickup there. I figured that one of the hot intermodals coming south would keep it in the yard awhile and so I decided to make the one-hour drive north to see if I could catch them and I got there just when he was finishing up his work! I chased him all the way to Princeton, Indiana on the CE&D Subdivision and got several nice shots which I will be posting in the weeks ahead!

According to the CSX Website: A locomotive commemorating the proud history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway has entered service as the fifth in the CSX heritage series celebrating the lines that came together to form the modern railroad.

Numbered CSX 1869 in honor of the year the C&O was formed in Virginia from several smaller railroads, the newest heritage locomotive sports a custom paint design that includes todays CSX colors on the front of the engine and transitions to a paint scheme inspired by 1960s era C&O locomotives on the rear two-thirds.

The C&O Railway was a major line among North American freight and passenger railroads for nearly a century before becoming part of the Chessie System in 1972 and eventually merging into the modern CSX. In 1970, the C&O included more than 5,000 route miles of track stretching from Newport News, Virginia, to Chicago and the Great Lakes.

Designed and painted at CSX’s locomotive shop in Waycross, Georgia, the C&O unit will join four other commemorative units in revenue service on CSX’s 20,000-mile rail network.

The heritage series is reinforcing employee pride in the history of the railroad that continues to move the nation’s economy with safe, reliable and sustainable rail-based transportation services.

Tech Info: Fuji XT-1, RAW, Converted to 720nm B&W IR, Nikon 10-24 @ 12mm, f/5.6, 1/400, ISO 400.