Jackson-Lansing Railroad

[M&LS]

Speaking of sounds! If you get to hear the horn on 1419... Wow, dreadful, sounds like something dying! Not the old conrail horn. All four locos were in mason today, 1760 sitting by the antiques barn, 1758 & 1443 at American fuel siding and 1419 at mason box!
I got photos of 1758 & 1443 (nothing else was there at 5ish) I'll get them uploaded in the next few days(inventory is coming so maybe not)...

@aarr: watched? Sounds ominous! How so... CCTV? Rent-a-cop? Or foaming rail fan?

[AARR]

@aarr: watched? Sounds ominous! How so... CCTV? Rent-a-cop? Or foaming rail fan?

There have been a few tresspassers and they're taking precautions to avoid theft/vandalism. For railfans who are respectful and follow laws they have nothing to worry about.

[Tim]

AARR, please contact me at timmyp46@hotmail.com. The private message button hasn't worked in over a week.

[Dan Cluley]

For the last week or so, the 1758 has been sitting on the freight house siding in Mason, and the two GP-15s have been running around, but I haven't seen the 1760 at all.

Anybody know where it's hiding these days?

[GTW_Fan_58111]

Hey all! I just joined this forum about a week ago and I am following the A&B RR here in Lansing. I always go to the Airport every day and I go thru North Lansing (Grand River) and I have heard that the A & B RR have plans to begin rail service to Friedland Industries in North Lansing on the old spur that runs thru North Lansing. Has anybody heard when that is supposed to begin? They probably will have to do some major track work in order to get any kind of GP thru to Friedland. Any thoughts as to when they are gonna start work on that line? If anyone has any info about that track work and when they will begin working on it, will you please let us all know? I want to take pics!

Thanks!

Tim Lewis

[wawatam]

Hello Tim,
Welcome aboard. If you go to the second page of MICHIGAN TALK and scroll down part way you'll see the topic LANSINGS OLD TOWN RAILROAD SPUR TO BE REACTIVATED. That will give you all the information thats out there right now. I wouldn't expect to see any work on the line until spring after the frost is out of the ground.
See you around, Tim.

[wawatam]

The crews seem to be pretty busy these days. Working 5 or 6 days a week now. They also seem to have changed their operations somewhat now that Mason is where they store their power. From what I have seen, the crew that brings the train up from Jackson in the early morning now drops the cars on the main south of Kipp Rd outside of Mason. They bring their power up into Mason and leave it there for the daytime crew. Between 10:00 and 11:30 the day crew goes back south, picks up the train and then heads north again up to RSDC and beyond. Later in the evening they return south, switching out cars at MPC before heading to Jackson. Tim.

[Pete Mayor]

A few photos from today to help illustrate current JAIL power.

[MSchwiebert]

Another reason why they might be a bit "touchy" to folks observing things.

http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/ ... enDocument

@aarr: watched? Sounds ominous! How so... CCTV? Rent-a-cop? Or foaming rail fan?

There have been a few tresspassers and they're taking precautions to avoid theft/vandalism. For railfans who are respectful and follow laws they have nothing to worry about.

[intocable83]

Wow, glad no accident occurred and good job to the ones who were on duty that day actually paying attention and prevented it. Reading the report I had to laugh a little about the "JAIL" officer thing though.

[AARR]

It is not just the railfans JAIL has to worry about it would seem.

I know that CSX / NS can make life hard for JAIL but other than fines and penalties what else can be done? For example, and I have never heard of this being done, could the sale of the line to JAIL be revoked so that NS would resume operation? I suppose that is what the unions want in the first place.

[sd70accsxt700]

Wow thats pretty messed up. Sounds like no one on the ADBF knows what they are doing. One heads up to the JAIL crew, was that they realised something was wrong when they noticed the power switch was wrong. Not knowing how close they were to the power switch it may have been a good thing they backed up also, so as not to be hit by Q195. Although maybe not that far.

[Clay320]

This is basic railroading here that there screwing up on. Looks like they need to get their act together before someone gets hurt or killed.

[A No.1]

I wonder if the Engineer still has a job.

[Hogger1225]

Just listening to them on the radio pretty much much confirms that they run a hap-hazard operation with a bunch of non-qualified people.

[Raildudes dad]

I wonder if the Engineer still has a job.

The conductor is in charge of the train. The engineer doesn't move unless instructed to do so by the conductor. Granted the letter to the STB was by a biased source but "The conductor wasn't paying attention"? As a student conductor it was drilled in my head that I had to pay attention. It's one thing to day dream if you're the only train moving on the RR , but entering onto the mainline of a Class 1? It's a little scary if they didn't realize the peril by going past a RED signal.

[J T]

I wonder if the Engineer still has a job.

The conductor is in charge of the train. The engineer doesn't move unless instructed to do so by the conductor. Granted the letter to the STB was by a biased source but "The conductor wasn't paying attention"? As a student conductor it was drilled in my head that I had to pay attention. It's one thing to day dream if you're the only train moving on the RR , but entering onto the mainline of a Class 1? It's a little scary if they didn't realize the peril by going past a RED signal.

Is this the signal?

[tyler_phillips]

So, let me get this right... JAIL was on JAIL tracks and were going to venture onto CSXT tracks? They went through the red signal but stopped before CSXT tracks because they saw the switch was not aligned for them to do so? If that is the case, yes they did make a mistake, a potentially dangerous one. But from reading the report and reading comments on here, it sounds to me like and former NS and the UNION employees are just pissed they lost their nice cushy union jobs to a short line and exaggerated this incident to just bash the living heck out of JAIL. It's not like they actually did venture out onto the CSXT tracks... Granted a mistake was made, no excuse for that, but it all seems exaggerated (having to stop the CSXT train for 1-1/2 hours and having their crew walk their train) to me. It's funny how NS and the unions couldn't make the Lansing Secondary profitable, but a little ol' short line comes in and completely turns it all around.

[Hogger1225]

The signal you see in the picture is not the signal that A&B ran. It is out of sight to the left, seems it was cropped out in the photo. The signals are right across from each other. The location of the picture is CSXT territory. A&B (or JAIL) doesn't enter their own territory until they are south of MA, just south of Michigan Ave. The "incident" occurred on CSXT territory. Where A&B comes out onto the CSXT #2 track at Turner St, there are no signals, which means that whoever comes out onto #2 track at Turner St has to operate at restricted speed to the next signal, which would be the signal on the west side of the track at North Lansing. Somebody wasn't watching, or, the crew was just plain not qualified in which case there should have been a CSXT pilot on board. If anybody wonders how I know this, I worked the Lansing-Jackson run for NS before I got temporarily pulled for health reasons, also worked the area since 1970.

[tyler_phillips]

Even though they were already on CSXT trackage, still sounds exaggerated to me. Just my opinion. People make mistakes, if you really pay attention, how many red lights or stop signs do you see vehicles go through in a day? Quite a few. Stuff happens, at least they caught their mistake well enough in time and got it corrected, with out incident.