Let us hear about the industrial railroads in your area!

Coastal Transportation Inc. operates a fleet of small freighters between Seattle and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. On the Seattle end they sometimes interchange (boxcars, mostly) with BTSF. You can see their trackage, usually with a couple of boxcars sitting on them, as you cross the Ballard Bridge going northbound, They're on the south side of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, just to the right (east) of the bridge and north of the self-strorage building. Their power is a little old Plymouth ML-8 critter, painted blue to match their fleet, built for the DoE in 1943

Here's a picture: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/coastal.jpg

I've seen the Plymouth sitting at the end of a siding for the past week. I meant to go down there and snap some pictures of my own, and a few of Ballard Terminal RR's #98 SW-1, but wasn't able to. That's a shame because this was one of the rare sunny weekends in Seattle.

Not too long ago I lived in sykesville, MD. I'm a familar with the Maryland Midland. On the Mt. Airy stuff. There is a nightly CSX local that serves Mt. Airy cold storage. Willard Chemical also recieves some tank cars a few times a week from what I hear. Mt. Airy cold storage has one switcher that is always in plain sight from the road. Anyways. Good Day.

smiles19 wrote:Not too long ago I lived in sykesville, MD. I'm a familar with the Maryland Midland. On the Mt. Airy stuff. There is a nightly CSX local that serves Mt. Airy cold storage. Willard Chemical also recieves some tank cars a few times a week from what I hear. Mt. Airy cold storage has one switcher that is always in plain sight from the road. Anyways. Good Day.

thanks for the information

Meeker Southern actually rosters a ex Weyerhauser SW9 #303. Meeker Southern purchased the loco in 2003 to replace the leased CBRW#211. Meeker numbered the loco #103. I work for the Ballard Terminal RR which runs both railroads so I know just a little about the RRs. Also in response to a earlier post about Meeker being irregulary scheduled is quite wrong. The runs are mainly Mon,Wed,Fri starting early (7-8am) We stick to this schedule as best as we can. We have only broken it because of car problems or special pulls. Of course we wont run if we dont have cars or enough work to do. Hope this helps out.

Nice looking switcher!

A couple questions - it appears the horn is piped out the rear of the cab instead of the front - is that a Weyerhaeuser modification? Unusual!

Also the loco has an MU jumper and all the MU hoses but the end rail almost appears rigid, like a non-MU engine. Does that somehow move to allow MU operation?

In Ashland & Russell, KY, theres AK steel, who owns a lot of at least 20 or so SW1200's, performing tons of switching duties in and around the plant on leased CSX trackage, and between the West Works & the coke plant on Tracks 3 & 4 between NC Cabin & Clyffeside. Also Mansbach leases tracks for scrap pickup, with a loaner PR switcher and a couple older ALCO's OOS. Marathon Oil in Catlettsburg has leased RJ Corman units to perform switching duties before moving the tankers are moved for pickup by CSX.

In Cardinal, ON, the Canada Starch Company (CASCO) has a plant that is served by rail. CASCO has a fleet of tank cars and hoppers for transporting corn products (syrup, starch, etc), which are leased from PROCOR and CGTX (I believe), and bear the CASCO logo. They have also always had a switcher on hand, the first of which was still steam (although I don;t know the details). In the late 1990s they had an SW7, which was subsequently replaced by an RS3. After the RS3, a CN GP9RM was briefly leased for service until they acquired an ex-CN GMD-1.

CASCO interchanges with CN on the Kingston sub.

A video of said GMD-1 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyBFpq4hiDM

Here's a link that shows several generations of CASCO equipment:
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/i ... /casco.htm

western milling owns a couple of different locations the one in goshen is a gp 9 with the number 1229

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1WP ... hsewc1AFXM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:

and another locomitive

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1WP ... GeZ1vwWCuM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:

though it has since been moved somewhere else i can confirm it is still used!

There is a shortline operation that services the Raritan Centerand Heller Industrial Parks in Edison NJ. Except for some pics posted on Facebook, no one seems to know, or at least talk about, this fairly new operation, the Raritan Central RR.
https://raritancentralrr.com/operations.html