Carolina report

last week I went to North and South Carolina for work and to visit my daughter in Charlotte, and had time for some shotgun railfanning.

On the drive from the airport, I paid a brief visit to the NS Charlotte yard.  Its about the same size as Waterville, fairly busy, and there was the usually collection of big look-alike GE's (yawn), with single and paired high hood GP-38's serving as switchers and local power. The Amtrak station is perched on the mainline along the northern perimeter of the east-west yard, and I found this North Carolina regional passenger train preparing to load passengers. Its a state-funded Charlotte to Raleigh train that runs several times daily, operated by Amtrak, kind of like the Downeaster.  The well-maintained equipment appears to be ex-GO locomotives and rebuilt P-S smoothside lightweight coaches. In addition, the Southern Crescent and the Carolinian also serve Charlotte

A few blocks to the south was the former (ORIGINAL) Norfolk Southern yard, now operated by Aberdeen, Carolina and Western, where I found these good looking SD-40-2's laying over

The rest of the week was spent dodging allligators, cottonmouths, chiggers and spiders the size of peaches in the swamps of South Carolina. I was based near Columbia, which is the cross-roads of numerous secondary mainlines of NS and CSX, including the former Seaboard mainline to Florida.Theres' a decent amount of traffic but its a difficult place to railfan as  no one line has all that many trains, the trains run sporadically, and the closest thing to a central location is Devine Junction, just south of downtown along the USC campus.  It's an H-shaped junction that sprawls across about five city blocks, and even though about 75% of all rail traffic passes through no matter where you position yourself you ineveitably miss part of the action.  In addition, Devine Jct is a bland photo location, good only for ground level wedge shots despite the interesting track arrangement.

My most interesting catch in Columbia was actually in  across the Congaree River in Cayce.  The CMC steel plant had this interesting switcher, a re-engined RS-1. The plant and its rail operations are easily and legally observed from the 12th St Extension bridge and light is good all day. They also have a former Laurinburg and Southern S unit. Both these untis recently replaced an MP-15. The track in the foreground is the CSX mainline south.

Cayce is also home to the local CSX yard, which is situated on a 90 degree bend just west of the river crossing.  Both ends are accessible. My last visit here was 5 years ago when it was a melting pot of older EMD's in random paint schemes. But today it was populated by the usual GE's.

This old building hidden amongst other downtrodden warehouses, near the east ladder, hints at the source of the town's name

some power and jobs that were working the east end of the yard

and the west end of the yard