I headed out early Friday morning for Cincinnati and the 13th SUMMERAIL. I left my car at Jim Pearson’s in Richland (near Madisonville) and loaded my gear in his SUV. We followed the railroad north to Evansville Indiana and checked out the action at CSX’s yard and got some good shots to start the day. We continued on north to Princeton Indiana and caught both some CSX and NS action.
State highway 64 took us east and in proximity to the NS line. We managed to miss three trains on the way to Louisville and missed a couple more on the way through northern Kentucky to Covington just across the river from Cincinnati. We checked into the Courtyard Marriot right by the river and got a room with a balcony overlooking the elevated rail approach to the bridge over the Ohio River. We railfans are not too hard to please as long as we are close to the rail action.
As soon as we got our stuff unloaded we headed across the river for the traditional Friday night dinner at Camp Washington, a Cincinnati chili institution. The specialty of the house is Chili 5 way (chili, beans, onions, spaghetti and cheese), a salad and iced tea. Got to meet lots of old friends – I have been to 13 of the 14 SUMMERAL events. After dinner we headed for CUT (Cincinnati Union Terminal) for the traditional Friday night slide show (just slides and comments) and a visit to Tower A (the home of the Cincinnati Rail Club) and the former control tower when passenger trains were still in vogue. The slide show attendance has outgrown the Tower A space and the show is now in the CUT auditorium – much more comfortable. After the slide show Jim and I headed back across the river to get some night shots of downtown Cincinnati and then back to the hotel for a well deserved night’s rest.
Saturday and we were up early, sampled the hotels buffet breakfast and then headed south for a little train watching before the SUMMERAIL program get under way. We caught a couple of trains but missed several others. If we were watching CSX a NS train would thunder by and if we were trackside at NS the action was on CSX. We spent nearly an hour at the CSX/NS crossover and no action.
We got to CUT about noon with time to check out the railroadiana show before the main event got under way at 1:00 PM. The digital multimedia shows were superb, as usual with a lot of winter scenes and winter action featured. My favorite of the afternoon session was Mel Patrick’s show of the Rio Grande ‘California Zephyr’ as it headed west from Denver to Logan, Utah. The scenery was spectacular and the music a perfect compliment to the spectacular photography.
The dinner break found us back across the river in Covington and after checking other possibilities we settled for our favorite, Wertheims, for an excellent German dinner and a couple of glasses of Warsteiners. The evening shows were good but not quite as good as my morning favorites. We drove around downtown Cincinnati but didn’t find any photo ops so headed back across the river and the sack.
Sunday found us sleeping in a bit and then on the road for a railfanning trip back to western Kentucky. We found several good photo spots on the CSX Short Line just south of Covington and at both locations we were able to catch meets of southbound and northbound trains. We stayed ahead of a southbound train through Verona, Glencoe, Sparta and LaGrange and finally let him catch up with us at Anchorage just east of Louisville.
We followed the P&L south out of Louisville but no action. We did stop to see the old and decaying IC depot at Kosmodale. We then headed east to the CSX mainline but, again, no action. We did hear a train at Elizabethtown but never did find it. We followed US 62 west from Elizabethtown hoping against hope for some P&L action. We stopped in Central City for a bite to eat and, wouldn’t you know it, as we left Wendy’s we just saw the tail end of an eastbound P&L coal train. CSX was quiet from Nortonville to Earlington and we got to Jim’s place at a bit after 8:00 PM. Another trainless hour and I was back home after a great SUMMERAIL weekend.