Switching Small Customers

it's a Saturday morning on Tampa's enervate Peninsula while running errands I happened upon the port tampa switcher dropping a boxcar to a newsprint company I believe all these cars are loaded and they're really making that old track structure grown this is usually an overnight job so it's rare to see this work in daylight one customer getting one car even though railroads don't often seek this kind of business anymore there's still a lot of it it's why CSX and other big railroads keep small engines like this chessy era GP 40 and keeps rebuilding them this one is a GP 40 - 3 it's risky to run anything heavier than four axle power on many of these old industrial tracks there's a switcher in Plant City almost every day I caught this one on a Saturday morning Oh 709 has come out from yeoman yard in Tampa to work businesses in Plant City it's come up from the fruit packing and cold storage Park out near the airport and is now heading to the Coronet area on the Plant City sub he's passing a signal named Lake Wales Junction now Lake Wales is 39 track miles from here why would this signal be called that in the early 20th century this was the seaboard route from Tampa out to the Miami mainline freights from South Florida came by a Tampa Brandon Plant City welcomed edison mulberry Bartow and West Lake Wales where they turned right toward Miami and so Lake Wales Junction what you're really wondering about I know is that chattering in the background Lake Wales Junction is right next to an auction house every Saturday morning they auction off a load of let's just say budget priced items bars for two electric weed eaters amidst this bargain earring o7o nines conductor has lined the manual switch and entered the Plant City subdivision southbound two miles down the line he's stopping to switch international paper a distribution center at which goods are brought in by boxcar and delivered to customers via truck here's where switching takes some thinking ahead the engineer on the conductor's orders pulls the Train ahead to the point where the loaded car destined for the customer comes up to but not past the switch conductor uncouples the head of the train from the loaded car and tells the engineer to pull ahead till the train clears the switch between 527 70 Thank You protection when you go to problem conductor then lines the switch with a company track and orders the engineer to start backing up they back into the customers yard hook on to the empty boxcar and pulled it out onto the main clearing the switch the engineer backs the train onto the loaded boxcar beyond the switch conductor must then walk to the other end of the loaded boxcar and uncouple it from the bottom of the train then a head with the consist anyway reverse the switch 2770 clear of all tracks were lying in thinking all the way in when you're ready and back the loaded car into the customers yard and spot it at his loading dock I didn't fly any further over the property because a I would have lost visual sight of the drone which is against the rules and B you can't see that spot from the ground anywhere on public property so I keep my distance you can't see this from public property either but it's a nice view and I didn't think anyone would mind at milepost s v8 25.6 on the planned city subdivision this is Dani Harmer out Tanvi that's good

Channel: Distant Signal

Views: 150,723

Keywords: Railroad, trains, railfan, railfanning, Danny Harmon, CSXT, CSX, Tampa, Plant City, International Paper, GP-40-3, switching, Local train, Railroad switching operations

Id: 52DK0zqFSe0

Length: 5min 19sec (319 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 23 2018