Chasing 4253

[Attention non-railfans: Feel free to just look at the pictures, and come back later in the week!]

In the early 90s, I spent a couple of years working retail for my best boss ever and we became friends and I started a sort of unofficial railfan apprenticeship. We still hang out and shoot trains from time to time, and he's still ten times the photographer and railfan that I am, but I have managed to learn a lot from Godfrey Ozzenbarq III (not his real name)* over the years. Hopefully, that's evident here.

One day in 1991 when I was heading track-side and he had to stay behind and manage the consumer flotsam and jetsam that flowed through our little corner of the Erol's empire, Godfrey Ozzenbarq III (not his real name) gave me a simple instruction. I was to shoot any GP30M - engines numbered in 4200s, especially the three still in their old blue (B&O or C&O) paint. One - 4236 - Godfrey (not his real name) had spied at the head end of a trainload of tanks being unloaded (near Laurel, MD - I think) for the Desert Storm Victory Celebration in 1991. Another - 4264 - I don't think either of us ever saw. The third - 4253 - was sporting inexplicably fresh "B&O Blue" paint, complete with a crisp yellow sunburst on the nose. They all had historical significance, at least to us railfans, as they had been built in the early 1960s and would soon be leaving the CSX roster for regional short-lines and various scrap yards. But with its clean appearance and retro paint scheme, it was 4253 that became our Grail.

Thus began about 3 years of near-misses, sightings from Metro trains, sightings in the pouring rain or at night or without cameras. The longer Godfrey Ozzenbarq III (not his real name) and I went without getting the shots we wanted of this little old engine or its brethren, the more obsessed we became. Eventually, I didn't even care as much about the engine as I did about the hunt.

Our quest was aided by the CSX "touch-trace" system, an 800 number their customers could call to track shipments by entering railroad car numbers. We were fortunate that for whatever reason, CSX also included engine numbers in this database, so with a toll-free call we could find out where these units were and where they were heading (with, as it turns out, varying degrees of accuracy). The touch-trace system led me to northeast baltimore's Penn-Mary Junction in Summer of 1992 for the shot below. It was not the lead unit on this idle train, so I couldn't get in front of it. Also, I had only about a minute to shoot before a long string of auto-racks got yarded on the next track, blocking my access.

Later in 1992 I caught our favorite little engine racing across Randolph Road near Rockville, MD. (See 5/11/09 "Basic Training" post)

The two photos above come from the one and only time I caught up with 4253 in the sun. She was sandwiched between two GP40Ms in Chessie colors, just leaving Hagerstown, MD over an old Western Maryland Railway bridge in the spring of 1993. Godfrey Ozzenbarq III (not his real name) was annoyed by my having this encounter, as he still had only caught this unit in a big rainstorm.

The next and final time I encountered 4253 was in October of 1993 in Cumberland, MD. Godfrey (not his real name) and I had spent a relatively fruitless day slogging from Mexico Tower to Sand Patch and back without much to show for our efforts. The tower operator at Viaduct Junction had been cool enough to share with us what he knew about the day's lineup. No 4200s. According to touch-trace, 4253 had left Baltimore that morning en route to Philadelphia - farther away from Cumberland.

So there we were, content to sit in the car with our cheeseburgers, watching empty tracks and listening to quiet radio scanners, when we heard Q401 (a train that terminates in Cumberland) approaching. On the point of Q401 was our wayward quarry, and after yarding their train, the crew was backing the power down past the locomotive maintenance house and leaving it there.

Yes, we chased it into the yard and climbed all over it in exactly the way that two mature, well-balanced adults would not. In the shot above, the power prepares to back off the main and into the yard. The two frames below were taken in the yard as soon as the crew departed.

Below: One more shot as 4253 rolls out of Hagerstown in 1992.

* Fake name courtesy of my loving wife, Winifred K. Gobsmacker (not her real name).