CSX - Santa Train 2017 - the 75th Anniversary - Elkhorn City to Dante - Part 1 - 11/18/17
1. Santa Train Schedule for the 75th. 2017.
2. Santa Train trip map 2017.
3. Santa Train Consist 2017 Part 1.
4. Santa Train Consist 2017 Part 2.
5. P901 (the “Santa Train”) arrives Elkhorn City at 7:05 a.m. just as it becomes daylight.
6. Ricky Skaggs is next to Santa.
7. Santa Train crowd.
8. P900 accelerates through Elkhorn Yard.
9. N/b Q692 behind 3388-315-3173-132-715 starts forward as soon as P900 clears.
10. Crossing Hills Mill trestle between Splash Dam and Haysi.
11. P900 after stopping at Clinchco VA. Although you don’t see them, there were at least 100 railfans here. This is taken from the grade of the old mine spur. Sue took a video with her cell phone that lasted 5 minutes of a stream of railfans (including me) slipping, sliding and tripping down through the kudzu to get to their cars for a hasty catch-up. It didn’t much matter for there was a huge backup of traffic getting through Fremont.
12. Exiting the tunnel at McClure.
13. Pulling to a stop at Dante. Some jerk didn’t bother to remove that green vest for the hundred railfans that were lined up to get this shot.
14. Inching to a stop at Dante.
15. Stopped at Dante.
16. The crew gets lunch. CSX engineer and railfan T. King was the engineer.
17. Clinchfield received their last steam locomotives – four 4-6-6-4s from ALCo -- in 1947. F3A 800 arrived a year later, and the Challengers were suddenly obsolete.
18. Clinchfield 800. View 2.
19. Eddie Bowers with Vintage Locomotives LLC owns 800 now.
20. SD45 3632 was never Clinchfield, but her sisters at SCL were. Parent SCL traded seven SD45s for Clinchfield’s seven non-EMD U36Cs, as Seaboard Coast Line had numerous General Electrics.
P900 will be pulling out around 10:28 a.m. I’m rushing down to the south end of Dante Yard, and we will resume the chase then.
Train images used by permission of Everett N Young