Hi, Finally, late Friday afternoon we reached Marion and went directly to the station, which is now a museum and has a large model railroad, to find out about the schedule for the weekend.
Norfolk Southern's line between Columbus and Sandusky was active. The first train was this local coming north. It would proceed north of the station up to a small yard, which is its base. The picture was taken from the top step of AC tower.
Shortly southbound coal empties came through town, again from the top step of AC tower.
These are the phones and
the model board in AC tower. The levers are also in the tower in their original position under the model board and they still work. While obviously they do not control any track the board will still light up to show any route that is lined. Also, Tower Preservation Society members can cause an appropriate light on the model board when they determine using a radio that a train is approaching.
The tower originally sat in the northwest quadrant of the crossing between what is now NS and what is now CSX. On November 26, 1999 it was moved to the southwest quadrant. When it was erected at its current location it lost about 1/2 its height.
Another string of coal empties heads south across the CSX diamonds. This is now CSX's mainline between Cleveland, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. The north track here (nearest the train) once was part of the Erie RR.
After awhile the local came back and picked up a string of cars that had been left by CSX for interchange.
Finally a southbound train of coal empties showed up on CSX's Toledo to Columbus line. The train is crossing the Cleveland to St. Louis main.
Our day wrapped up with a pleasant surprise; one of the NS C4 rebuilds on the point of a northbound coal train.
After checking out the vendors at Summerail on Saturday morning we returned to the station where we shot a southbound headed for Columbus, and
northbound light power (above and below).
We finally caught trains on CSX headed for Indianapolis, one passing through downtown and
one about to cross NS (above and below).
Our last train in Marion was this NS southbound.
On our way home on Sunday we stopped along NS east of Pittsburgh for some photography. I had shot this cut west of Latrobe, PA during Conrail and wanted to photograph a train here under NS.
We then went into Latrobe where we got this eastbound stack train and a westbound coal train at the sttion. Unfortunately I messed up the shot of the coal train.
Thanks for looking.
We took a bus from the port, which the ship ran as a shore excursion, into town and then walked to one of the famous churches (above and four below).
The church we visited was the Basilica di San Vitale (above and 11 below). It is UNESCO World Heritage site, one of eight structures listed in Ravenna.
We took many photos of the mosaics. Here are some of them (above and five below). They were all over, on the ceilings, floors, and columns.
When we returned to the ship we noticed these large structures at the port with huge fishing nets. We believe they are used by commercial fishermen.
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