Yesterday on the Hitop….

We were out yesterday on a warm but hazy day in the Kanawha valley to follow quite a few trains actually. We stopped at the Dickinson yard office first to get the low down on the days action. As GP7 5628 was putting a train together, we decided to head up the valley to Nitro, as we heard some action there on our scanner.

When we arrived, we pulled off onto public property about as close as we could get to Allied Chemical where Alco S2 9106 had already gotten his lineup for the day, and was starting to work Allied for outbound loads going to Spring Street. Photos below of working Allied:

After about an hour of working Allied, we got one more shot of 9106 pulling two scrap gons out of Paxton Salvage:

Since we were already in the driveway that runs back to the Nitro yard office, we caught 9106 and train heading east towards Spring Street yard:

After arriving at Spring Street, the crew dropped off its cars for the Spring Street switcher, pulled in the clear, and as he had to wait for the Spring Street turn coming up from Dickinson, the crew went to beans across the tracks at Sam and Mickey’s:

The Spring Street job had its normal power in GP9 7466, which pulled two boxcars out of Armitage Furniture for the Spring Street turn, then sorted the outbound cars for the turn:

When 7466 was finished, it too had to wait for the Spring Street turn to arrive from Dickinson, so the crew joined the others at Sam and Mickey’s. Part two coming later, so stay tuned…..