Ashland VA 8.1.09: The Day The Juice Stood Still (And Briefly Reversed Direction)

Things were looking mighty weird by early afternoon on August 1st in Ashland. No morning manifests, no sign of the northbound Silver Star...and where was either Juice Train? It was well into the window when the northbound loads (Q740) would normally go through, and the empty train that normally precedes it (Q741) hadn't shown up yet.

A yellow nose appeared in the distance to the north, and like the Palmetto before it, lingered entirely too long near the station. There was an awful lot of horn-blowing going on too. Hmm...

More horn blowing and ditch light blinking as the train got underway again, and as it drew closer the consist of well cars up front and white and orange reefers in back was unmistakable - Q741 had finally arrived. But wait...was that the LOADED Juice Train waiting in the distance in the other direction?? Yes, but too far away for a meet in front of the camera and with no time to relocate, unfortunately. ES44DCs 5288 and 5213 had plenty of time to get Q741 out of the way before their northbound counterpart got moving again. SD70MAC 4743 and ES44DC 5233 peeked out from behind Q741's tail, creeping carefully up the street...and then as the last cars approached, it groaned to a halt.

Several agonizing moments passed (during which I'm sure a few profanities were hurled from the traffic on England Street) until the slack pulled out with a bang and forward motion continued - just for a minute, until it stopped, rolled back a little, and then banged forward once again. I'm sure Tropicana appreciated the torture test being administered to their cars' drawbars at that point. No hesitating this time as the train quickly got up to a much-closer-to-normal speed and finally got out of town.

By the way, for all you railfans out there who'd like to live in a house fronting to these tracks, the house seen in the background with a yellow and white sign in the front yard is currently for sale - yours for the low, low, rock-bottom price of $1,050,000.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• CSX
• freight
• train
• railroad
• Tropicana
• Juice
• meet
• Q740
• Q741
• ES44DC
• SD70MAC
• Francis
• Street
• Ashland
• Virginia
• HD

[NJCoastExp]

Looks like is running restricted speed.

[FastFlyingVirginian]

Yup. I explain why in the next clip's caption - got to string the story out a little you know. :)

[TommyBNSF]

Damn, once again, no horn from 5288. It's got a rare K5LLM horn on it. I saw recently, but not in the lead :((.

[mgaines106]

Hmm...hopefully not malfunction anywhere between the Myrtle Street and Vaughan Road Crossings.

[eeeman07]

I was in DC today and heard the Northbound Q740 in Alexandria VA. It was late indeed.

[GaithersburgRail]

BTW, do you know that the loaded juice train is Q740.

[GaithersburgRail]

Nice juice meet!