Alco's to Saginaw

[patrick]

Was in saginaw today and saw the transfer of alcos from bay city to Saginaw as today marks Day 2 for the LSRC in Saginaw. The light power was seen along the saginaw river moving towards saginaw and was as follows. south to north.....2003,2052, 3504,281,975,381. all were running. The LSRC in saginaw has been very busy with coal also. The train the night before had dual NS power on it. Z61629 came into Saginaw today with csxt 4776? and csxt 51? with an eastern coal train. LSRC is using csxt train symbols for the next 30 days along with csxt's radio freqs. The CTC signals will come down within the next 90 days. I spoke with Crash today along and he expressed that the HESR is working closly with the LSRC and the former CSXT line that runs through Bay City may nolonger see coal trains in the future. Talks are going on about a possible new track going in at mershon going from the saginaw river bridge north connecting to the HESR main. LSRC is looking to run coal trains and other freights on the HESR main to bay city. The LSRC is also possibly going to give up all dow traffic to the HESR and allow the HESR to run on their track through freeland. there is also talk of moving the LSRC-HESR interchange from Bay City to Saginaw. This would mainly elimanate Bay City yard traffic completely. Also, the LSRC has apperently expressed the desire to allow the HESR to have the interchange to paines because they do not want to mess with it. Crash said the best thing to do is keep you eyes on the tracks in the area and learn from what you see. I also heard, though not from crash, the LSRC may be looking at many more EMDs including 2 more GP38's and some switchers. Only time will tell what changes take place, but for now, it looks as though I will have my hands full keeping up with things in my area. Lots of changes on the way. I'll surely be keeping all informed of the changes as I see them being made.

[markvz]

Sad to see the Alcos starting to lose ground to EMD stuff, but it was bound to happen someday. In a way though I'm excited to see more variety on the line. I don't do much railfanning around where I am now because it's always grey KCS GP40's, with the exception of the rare Gateway Western GP40. It's just no fun to go watch them when you know exactly what's coming. LSRC is very interesting in this respect, and very friendly to railfans. I'm just glad to see the LSRC do what it takes to ensure their survival. I'm impressed with how they've ressurected a line that the D&M lost all faith in.

By the way, when I was back in Oscoda for a weekend a few weeks ago, I noticed the tracks in that area looked much better than they've been in years. I didn't know they had done such track work.

Make sure y'all get some pics for me, I'm looking forward to getting some of my own when I can get back to Michigan in December.