I was running some errands in Callahan today when the headlights of a NB CSX engine shinning off in the distance on the Baldwin-Callahan sub caught my eye. By the time I stopped, grabbed my camera and looked through my lens, I noticed the train was stopped probably at milepost 18 on the Crawford slope. I then looked to my right down the main line toward Folkston and noticed a maintenance of way truck welding on the west track just north of the cross over. Beyond them was an oncoming SB manifest slowly rolling toward the CR 108 grade crossing. The gates went down, much to the frustration of the drivers who were heading west toward Callahan Immediate School to pick up their kids. Once that train past, the headlights of the NB train on the Baldwin-Callahan sub began flashing, signalling its start up toward the junction. I got a couple of head on shots before 6 CSX engines pulling a manifest full of old gondolas and grain cars rounded the curve and slowly crawled through the grade crossing, blocking a line of huge yellow school buses heading east from Callahan Intermediate. The locomotives creeped onto the mainline and through the crossover as the maintenance crew stepped back. The flanges of the slow turning wheels creaking and clanging against the sharp curve of the sub and the cross over is something you don't hear much in Callahan. I wish I had a sound recorder that could capture those sounds that you don't usually hear from most trains racing through Callahan at top speed. Some of the freight cars had to be as old as I am; the names of the original railroads long faded beyond legibility. The final dozen or so cars were empty auto carriers, making their own unique banging sounds, its sides painted with the urban graffiti that seems to have become an art form of its own. Once that train cleared the track workers, a SB inter modal train crawled through the grade, followed by another SB manifest that took the sub toward Baldwin. I am sure the slow speed that the engineer of the inter modal train had to killing him as those trains usually are racing through Callahan as they try to beat the closing times of the ports in Jacksonville. All in all, having a quartet of trains traveling at unusually slow speeds was a nice change of pace from the normally high speeds in which they normally travel trough the Callahan.
