Train Chase Action

On a dreary spring afternoon in 1999, in my last semester of seminary in Atlanta, my dad and I enjoyed a week of railfanning all over central North Carolina. We spent a day riding the length of the Aberdeen line of the Aberdeen, Carolina & Western, and below West End and the Seven Lakes area we caught up with a pair of ACWR motors running light downhill to Aberdeen. The 38 was looking pretty good; the Uceta rebuild, however, was looking and sounding her age. In downtown Aberdeen, the pair did their daily ACWR work by rounding the south leg of the old wye and coming out to the CSX interchange to grab on to their interchange traffic. Hooked up and air pumped, the crew changed lead locomotives and then started their climb up out of town and north toward Star. The weather was not great that day, and in the late 90s neither dad nor I was using a high end camera ... so these are hardly the best chase pictures I've produced. However, the memories are great: my first introduction to the Carolina Route, a road that would grow up and flourish over the 20 years that elapsed until my next visit.

In April of 2019 -- exactly two decades since my previous rail visit to Aberdeen -- chase pal Ben Wells and I found an Aberdeen, Carolina & Western crew working their expanded CSX interchange with an ex Canadian National SD60F on the point, a Carolina Route green SD40-3 in trail, and two massive GE's in tow as CSX run-through power. It took them a few hours to get their outbound train put together, which gave Ben and me time to walk over to the Aberdeen & Rockfish offices and locomotive shed. Eventually, the ACWR crew (a woman and man, both incredibly friendly) was ready to pull through the tight wye in Aberdeen and make their drag up the hill toward Pinehurst. We shot them in town, then gave chase. However, at the top of the hill above Aberdeen, the train went into emergency, blocking a whole series of crossings. They had pulled a knuckle 6 cars back from the power on the climb uphill. Eventually, they found and installed a replacement, and we were back underway ... chasing them through the sandhills and pines all the way back to Candor. At the Purdue offloader, they dropped the CSX power, pulled to the other end of the yard, and -- in the words of the brakeman -- kept switching cars into the evening until they "lawed out." We could not have asked for better weather, nor a better train, nor a friendlier crew. I could have done without the dog that gave chase on Clement Road, however. Mean old hound.