Busy happenings - Holland/GR - 06/27/06

[~Z~]

Have had quite the interesting day so far around CSX land. First up, in the morning, X500 headed east out of Grand Rapids approx 8:35am. As I was getting into Zeeland, heard Q326 at Waverly preparing their setoff.
Now for the lunch time special. Got my BK for lunch, and headed towards the east end of Waverly. Heard a Y194 that was acting as the recrew for Q326(why they were still there 4 hours after arriving, who knows). Y194 piped up and said to the dispatcher, "I have good news and bad news. Good news is we made it here. Bad news is that we can't find the rear of our train."
This recrew of Q326 needed some help getting their train together. Local D700 was in Waverly as well, blocked in by a shove movement by Q326 so they were going to lend a hand with preparing the train.
While this is happening, we have a K908 coming past the Holland Depot, and I got some pics of it near 120th Ave in Holland.

K908 was heading east out towards Hudsonville, where it was going to meet Y121...I've never seen Y121 go out to Hudsonville. Turns out they headed out there to grab a single engine that N909 had left in the siding at Hudsonville. Y121 was going to bring this engine back to Waverly, needed N909 to give back the roost block so they could wye the engine so it faced the right direction. N909 is currently working up at West Olive. If anyone has info on this odd movement as to why N909 left an engine to get retrieved by Y121, I'm all ears. That Y194 symbol on the crew was quite odd as well. 5 separate trains with 6 symbols(Y194 and Q326)... Thanks for the good show CSX..only wish my lunches were longer to watch all this.

[GP30M4216]

Q335-27 today has CSX SD40-2 #8859 in scheme 7 (ex Conrail) and HLCX SD40-2 #9008 (a former Morrison Knudsen SD45), and 86 cars, including at least 20 CSX and chessie MTS for Nugent, and quite a few MQT boxcars as well. They were through Carleton this morning northbound at CC105 at 10:45AM. Aim for a dinner hour arrival in Grand Rapids with no major delays, that Scheme 7 paint should look good in the evening sunlight!

http://groups.msn.com/chessiechapter/_whatsnew.msnw

[SD80MAC]

GP30M, why do you call Conrail paint scheme 7?

Well I didn't see much at work today as I was only there in the morning. Saw X500 go east at roughly 8:50 a.m. Heard the local blowing for Breton but only caught the tail end of the last boxcar.

[~Z~]

Saw a few more things tonight after work. Woman was still working in Muskegon, so I headed out towards Wyoming Yard. Heard there was a coal train waiting at Lamar to head west. East tower was asking the train if it had a signal yet, they said no.. east tower said "good grief, call the dispatcher and see what's going on."
Dispatcher said something about Y121 at Waverly was still in the wye... 20 miles away! Dispatcher finally let the coal train, i believe was N914, head west. All the while, the west end job at Wyoming Yard was really kicking those cars hard... not the usual smoothness I see. I caught N914 down in Grandville along Chicago Dr for a shot.


Headed back on the highway, and heard Z739 (NS local on CSX trackage) waiting at Market St to head back to Hugart. Dispatcher said he needed to hold them while he tried to get the switches lined. PERFECT! Gave me enough time to get down to the Amtrak depot downtown. They were sitting on the Grand River bridge, but both Wealthy and Market St's gates were down for quite a bit. Five minutes later, CSX let them go, having to hand throw the switches on the sunside lead and into Hugart. Got a video of them goin by. After they cleared, I headed for home.

[~Z~]

Updated this one with a couple photos and a video.