Macon line trains

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Sometimes when I get off work at the Atlanta Airport I come through East Point and follow the old CofG Macon/Atlanta line past Industry Yard till I catch I-20 for home. Lately I have been seeing huge drag freights between 2:30 & 5:00 PM. They are always headed north or west as the CofG timetable would say. They usually are stopped at Oakland Jct. and sometimes stretch back to Industry or at least just past the Ft. Mack. MARTA station. They sometimes have as many as eight engines. When I saw this train today it had three big six axial units up front. Is this a typical local or is this some of that overflow traffic we hear so much about.....Warren

-- Warren D. Stephens (wdstephens@prodigy.net), February 25, 2000

Answers

Also likely is it may be a CSX train off of the A&WP junction at East Point. The speed limit on the tracks north of Lee (where CTC begins) is 30-35 mph, I don't have the timetable handy, so I'm not exactly sure. Since I only have a 1998 timetable, it actually shows the speed limit of the entire line from Atlanta to Macon being 35-40 mph, although many runs of it now are excepted track running at 10 mph. There's also a decent amount of switching that goes on around Morrow; when I was going to school at Clayton State, I'd often hear some of the locals blowing the crossings, and on a few occasions got stopped at the crossing in/out of the college.

The longer "mixed" train probably mentioned in the post is NS 197, which is the parts train that runs to/from Detroit I think.

-- Bart Youngblood (bart99gt@yahoo.com), August 05, 2002.


Warren: I'd guess that what you're seeing is not a Macon-Atlanta through train but just an accumulation of stuff from Industry Yard and the Hapeville-Forest Park switching zone. The line between East Point and Forest Park is extremely active, with many "small" customers in addition to the massive Ford plant. I'm assuming, of course, these trains you're seeing contain a lot of 86-foot auto parts boxcars, autoracks and other auto manufacturing rolling stock. You might leave work early one day and follow the line south for a bit, to the Forest Park marshalling yard. You'd be surprised how many rail customers are tucked back on those almost-hidden streets in the Forest Park area. I've seen as many as five switch crews working that area simultaneously in recent months. Stop and eat some Krystals at either the East Point location or the Hapeville location and you'll usually see a lot of trains...all going under 10 miles per hour.

-- Rob Richardson (RichDent10@aol.com), November 23, 2000.

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