A Snowy and Wintry Day of Railfanning in Marion, Ohio, at Marion Union Station. 1/19/2024.

Hello everyone. On Friday, January 19th, I ventured up to the venerable railfanning hotspot of Marion, Ohio, for what would turn out to be a pretty good day of railfanning. I initially planned on heading up to Fostoria, but due to the heavy snow and wintry conditions on this weekend of railfanning, I headed up to Marion instead. This was my first-ever time railfanning in Marion in the snow, and it was a rather productive day of railfanning.
Though the action was a tad slower due to the wintry conditions, Norfolk Southern and CSX provided an amble assembly of good catches. For the second time in as many months, I caught the Lehigh Valley Heritage Unit on today's NS manifest 18M. Even better, I caught the Lehigh Valley leading the daily train from Bellevue on down to Roanoke, Virginia. The heavy snow provided a great contrast to the beautiful red engine and would be the first of many great shots here today at Marion Union Station.
The action of the day started off with daily CSX intermodal train I008, the hotshot train from St. Louis on up to New York. After that, Norfolk Southern sent a rather uncommon local train to work the eastern connection of Marion. The eastern connection, right next to the diamond where the NS Sandusky District crosses the CSX Indianapolis Line, is an exchange point between the two railroads in local jobs. The NS local picked up the cars to bring back to the yard, and in the interim southbound 18M with NS 8104 rolled by and shortly after that northbound manifest 19W came north with a rather long train.
After the initial late-morning rush, CSX kicked off the afternoon with westbound autorack M205 and a rather late eastbound manifest M364 with a great consist. Today's M364 featured the second great catch of the day with a rare Chessie System 86-foot boxcar. This is the second time I have caught one of these magnificent boxcars here in Marion and the first of which I have seen in almost two years. Surprisingly, today's M364 had quite a few CSX 86-foot boxcars on their eastbound trip to Selkirk, New York. As I have said in my previous Marion railfanning videos, M364 is my favorite CSX train here in Marion and for good reason as it almost always has rare falling flag rolling stock in the consist, and today was no different.
After a short break in the action following M364, Norfolk Southern picked up the action again with a northbound coal train to Sandusky and daily intermodal train 266 to Columbus. 266 is one of the more unique trains on the NS Sandusky District as it always features foreign power, as today's train featured a pair of BNSF units leading the train. CSX then sent westbound M331 to Indianapolis with a pretty good lashup including an SD70MAC. The SD70MACs have slowly but surely made their return to the CSX system, and as M331 passed through, the snow started to come down once more. The snow made some excellent railfanning shots, especially of southbound NS intermodal 276 passing the local train as it worked around Marion. Recently, Norfolk Southern has re-routed 276 to run via the Chicago Line instead of the Fostoria District, and has also significantly lengthen the train. Thus, Norfolk Southern has made 276 (and its counterpart 277) one of the premier trains on the Norfolk Southern system as it takes intermodal containers between Chicago and Norfolk.
The day concluded with two CSX eastbound trains working side-by-side on the Indianapolis Line. M204 arrived late afternoon to do work in the CSX Marion yard, and eastbound manifest M332 passed by while M204 was switching its cars. The heavy snow provided some amazing shots of both trains in action. Sadly, this would be my last video of the day as the snow was falling harder and the daylight was fading fast. I was unable to stay and see M204 finish the job, but that would have taken another 45 minutes or so and by then no daylight would be left. Sometimes you just got to take what you can get. Even so, I felt no disappointment leaving when I did considering the great action shots of those last two trains.
Overall, this was one of my favorite days of railfanning down at Marion Union Station. I will be uploading another video from Marion Union Station in the near future as I also spent the next day railfanning here as well. Be on the lookout for my next video, and it will include more action in the snow just like today's video!
Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!
-N&W475.

[@evanschad85]

Awesome video! That was me waving from NS 9896 at 29:59

[@NW475]

Thanks for watching!

[@trainlover123trainsrock]

@@NW475 How do these engineers not use their windshield wipers in heavy snow?!