You know my planned shots don’t always work out the way I want them to, as much as I try! Today was one of those days!
I had finished my lunch and decided to head over to CSX Atkinson yard, here in Madisonville, KY, as I heard on the scanner that the Paducah and Louisville Railway (PAL) local was working the yard there and I thought I’d see if there was a picture to be had.
When I got to the yard, I saw that there were 5 GMTX (GATX) units sitting tied to a long string of cars and so I set out to grab some shots of the locomotives and had hopes that they were the pickups for the PAL local. Well, that didn’t happen as the local left to head back to Princeton, KY.
Well, there wasn’t anything else moving in the yard and I knew that PAL was loading a coal train at Warrior coal and decided to run out and see if I could catch a shot of it, or at least how much more they had to load. When I got there, they had 10 cars left and I started to put the drone up when I got a message from fellow railfan Lucas Pendley that there were 3 CSX units hooking up to the train that had the GMTX units on it!
I made a bee line back to the south end of the yard at Madisonville to wait and after they moved the train back and forth awhile Lucas told me that they had opened the knuckle on the lead engine, and they were just sitting.
Now, in comes the local (J732) from Casky Yard in Hopkinsville and I had kind of thought they might pick up this string of engines, or at least hoped! Well, after they dropped off their work, they backed into the train with the 5 GMTX and 3 CSX locomotives, to give a total of 11 units!
At this point I had my spots for pictures on this move in mind that I thought would make great shots! The first was going to be the S curve at Nortonville with my 150-600mm lens! So, Lucas and I made our way to the Nortonville and checked the signals at the crossover, which were red, so we set up just north of the S curve to get a shot as they pulled up to the signals. We knew from the scanner that hot intermodal Q028 was in the picture and figured he’d wait for it here.
Well, where we setup to wait was around the curve from the signals and we had no clue that the dispatcher had given them a green to Romney right after we left the signals! Well, when we saw they weren’t stopping we made a mad dash to the S curve hoping to get there in time, but it never happened as when we got the overpass for the curve the train was already past the spot. However, he did have a red at Romney, which is south of Nortonville and that’s where I captured this shot!
Here CSX hot intermodal Q028 heads north as it meets CSX J732 at Romney on the Henderson Subdivision at Nortonville, Ky. J732 had 11 engines, CSXT 4083, 4049, 4384, 278, 749, 7231, GMTX 2149, 2135, 2201, 2152 and 2151 on this move! Even though only the first 3 SD40’s were running it still made for a great picture!
My next spot on this chase I had planned on being was Gum Lick Trestle, however that spot didn’t work out and neither did the one I planned at Kelly, but I’ll talk about those in tomorrow’s post! Things don’t always go as planned, but that’s life as well sometimes and I still came away happy with my pictures!
Tech Info: DJI Mavic Air 2S Drone, RAW, 22mm, f/2.8, 1/1600, ISO 100, September 17, 2021.