GOING THE DISTANCE: Chasing Indiana's Most Unpredictable Short Line
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- Опубликовано: 4 сен 2024
- The Connersville and Newcastle (reporting Mark; CNUR) Railway is part of the ex-NKP from Fort Wayne to Connersville. Norfolk Southern, which controls the portion from New Castle northward, as part of their busy “Newcastle District”, takes a huge east/westward turn at New Castle and hops on the old Pennsylvania Railroad line to Cincinnati. The CNUR had very few customers at either end of the line (the only one served regularly is Neal Scrap Metal in New Castle), so this railway lived off storage cars and they made some pretty great bank off of it. Because of this, seeing mainline runs from end to end were extremely rare.
My friend TJ and I were very fortunate to be able to document one of these runs on the First Day of Fall. Having no idea they were going to run nearly the entire distance of the line to pick up 105 coal cars heading back to North Carolina, we made the whimsical chase I’d always dreamed of doing to just north of New Lisbon and back. On the return trip, both engines began experiencing wheel slip in Milton, so one of the green GMTX project units came to the rescue and helped bring them the rest of the way.
In September of 2021, Norfolk Southern (who had leased out the CNUR to Beesons) revoked the lease and the CNUR was no more. A small portion of the railroad remains between Beesons and Connersville under the name "Big Four Terminal" while the remainder of the line was leased to the New Castle Souther Railroad, who's parent company is the Cincinnati Eastern Railway. Unfortunately, no new business really boomed along the main line once the lease was restored to another railroad, so a majority of the crossings that we shot this train at have had the rails paved over, which no business expected to show up within the near future. That made this an even more epic catch.
Join us on our chase along the former Nickel Plate, getting several rare, undocumented shots as we explore what East/Central Indiana has to offer.
Enjoy!
The Nickel Plate portion has significantly heavier rail than the ex-NYC segment from Beesons south into Connorsville. Not sure why they abandoned the last part of the NKP into Connorsville instead of the NYC. It probably had to do with interchange and yard tracks at C'ville.
What a beautiful production this was. Thank you for taking us on this awesome journey! This is definitely one of the most interesting shortlines in America in my opinion. Awesome video.
Beautiful horn on that ole Santa Fe GP7u! Very nice video, you just earned another subscriber
That was very cool! (Dave).
Good video.who was the previous owner of unit #20 and what does the symbol on side of locomotive mean?
It’s a spartan. The mascot for Connersville High School is a spartan
It was built as NDM 9400
interesting
I wonder if they'll donate that GP7u to the Whitewater Valley Railroad, if ever they retire it sometime
All the crossbucks on this line need to be redone even if it only sees a couple of trains a year to show that it's still in use
Is that part of the same line that runs from Connersville to Metamora? I got to ride that a few years ago behind that old Lima diesel.
4:38 интересный бункер
I wonder why an engine from the Napoleon and Defiance was all the way over there
The former owners of Defiance ran the Connersville line.
Do you know what the Scanner Frequency is for that Railroad???????
Remind me why a railroad would revoke a lease on a line they weren’t going to operate anyways?
And I’ve crossed over the line on 70 hundreds of times, always wondered what was down there.
And they pay a fellow to follow the train and stand at crossings in case they don’t work?
The line was specifically used for storage cars only, which it still is, but to a lesser extent. They earn an incredible amount of revenue just for doing that. The conductor follows in a truck mainly for safety reasons just in case, yes, one of the crossings doesn't work, or the train would derail at one of them.
The liquidation value of the welded rail is rather high. The party operating the line had a falling out with NS so they leased the line to another party. Having someone follow the train and watch it at crossings is a common practice when running a line that is seldom if ever used.
We’re these cars in storage? Like the GP7U.
великие африканские железные дороги Америки!
What are you doing today at the end up in a little while I have a meeting with my dad at work so we can get a simple plan for tomorrow morning 🌄 if everything goes well with your mom having
What the heck. Ive never seen a train on this.
It used to be fun watching them leave newcastle all the time