| I have had my eyes on documenting rare signals this year, in particular tilt boards. The Ohio Central Railroad still operates a handful of these signals at their intersecting diamonds with other railroads. One of which I stumbled across my last visit to Brewster, OH by accident. Because of that, I decided to make a full trip out of it today to finally get a train actually passing it. The RJ Corman and the Ohio Central operate the tilt board on the south side of Justus, OH and operate almost daily to the massive Wheeling and Lake Erie terminal in Brewster to interchange cars. However, according to the local railfans, it is a pretty rare occurrence to manage to capture all 3 short lines running in the same day. Prior to driving out, I was told that RJ Corman had cars to interchange with the Wheeling today and would go OD at 0700 out of New Philadelphia. Unfortunately for me, Brewster is a near 3 and a half hour drive from my house, so I had to leave my house no later than 0330. It was a very tiring drive, but I hoped it would be fulfilling. While the Corman and the OHCR only run one train most days, the Wheeling has several ops that run in and out of the Brewster Terminal in both directions, which would help fill the gap between arriving and seeing the train by the tilt board. It was a foggy morning, and being able to see the railroad tracks and even the road was a struggle, but I managed to arrive in to Brewster around 0700. I had not heard anything from the Corman over the radio, so I decided to sit along the Wheeling to see if I could get some quick morning Wheeling action. Not too long after my arrival, I heard a train preparing to clear a warrant from the east side of the yard. I rushed over there and saw the headlight from WE 625, the night job from Navarre to Brewster, preparing to come back into the yard with a single hopper. WE 4003 was the sole power for todays train. I was quite pleased to see that it was one of the SD40-2s that had the completely black frame. Not a lot of Wheeling SD40-2s have this scheme. |