Summer Afternoon Railfanning in Deshler, Ohio. 7/6/2019.

Hello everyone! Today's video features an abundance of CSX action from my most recent trip up to Deshler, Ohio, a.k.a. "The Crossroads of the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio)." I went up there on Saturday, July 6th and got a pretty good day of action by Deshler's standards, one filled with the typical action one might see up there on a good day.

The good news about Deshler is not much has changed in terms of train traffic and railfanning. The location still sees about 50-55 trains on a daily basis and even better, the old B&O CPL signals are still in place along the Toledo Subdivision on both sides of the diamond. I am told by local railfans that those signals will remain standing and in use for the next few months at the very least as no plans have been made to replace them as of right now. Now, onto the action. The morning, even by this location's standards, was one of the busiest mornings of railfanning I've seen in a long time. In the first 2.5 (Two and a half) hours, I saw about 12 trains, but not too much out of the ordinary.

The best catches in the first few hours were the likes of the trains on the Toledo Subdivision and the unexpected foreign power on the Willard/Garret Subdivisions. The Toledo Subdivision was unexpectedly busy on this morning, as a number of trains, including the likes of Q350, Q142, Q560, Q508, and Q509 all came through town off the CSX mainline to Cincinnati. While all these trains are certainly regular trains, it was still surprising to catch that many in that time.

As for the Willard and Garrett Subdivisions, they were busy in their own right. In addition to the morning foreign power, we also caught an abundance of unit trains including a pair of coal trains, a couple oil and ethanol trains, and the CSX Coke Express. The afternoon featured some of the more typical trains, including the Union Pacific intermodal trains Q191 and Q192 going to and from North Baltimore, the BNSF afternoon westbound intermodal (Q171), and a couple additional manifests traveling on the CSX mainline to their respective destinations. Surprisingly, there were as many unit trains as regularly scheduled trains (i.e., manifest and intermodal) heading east and west across the diamond, something I hadn't seen for a long time.

All around, it was a pretty good day of action for being up there for about 8 hours. In that time span, I'd say I saw around 22-23 trains. Considering issues on the CSX Toledo Subdivision in that afternoon, that's a pretty good train count for Deshler, and despite the maintenance CSX crews were performing on the Toledo Subdivision, I can't complain since I saw plenty of action from the same line that morning.

Anyways, thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!

-N&W475