South Carolina Railfan Trip

Trip Goals:

Photograph and document the following for my future HO scale layout:

1. Freight cars still in Southern paint
2. Remaining Southern structures
3. Other unique freight cars
4. Pickens Railway
5. Industrial locomotives
6. Selected industries
   • GE Turbine – Greenville
   • TTX - Hamburg
   • Siemens Westinghouse – Charlotte

Pre Trip Research

Railfanning during my previous visits have been haphazard, with little to no planning. I decided to plan this trip in detail. I created an in-depth plan and used the following references:

• CarolinaRails Yahoo group
  
• Yahoo Maps
• Frograil.com http://www.frograil.com/
  
• DeLorme's South Carolina Atlas and Gazetteer
• Comprehensive Guide to Industrial Locomotives by Jay Reed
• SPV's South East Railroad Atlas
• Southern and NS timetables
• Southern and NS Track Profiles
• CSX Time tables, - I do no have any but there use to be some on the web, but CSX asked them to take them down. But these are still available via the Internet Archive. This is a great resource when a web site goes away.
• Local scanner frequencies

One thing that I forgot in my planning was Teraserver. I had completely forgotten about this excellent resource.

Actual Trip

Blacksburg, SC Spartanburg, SC Greenville, SC Pickens, SC Anderson, SC Greenwood, SC Augusta, GA Warrenville, SC Lancaster, SC Charlotte, NC

Blacksburg SC

As I was driving into Blacksburg, an southbound intermodal train came through, but I could only see it through the trees. Did not hear anything on the scanner. While I was driving out a southbound continuous welded rail train came through, and again nothing on the scanner. These were two of the four moving trains that I saw during this trip, both mostly hidden by trees.

I took over fifty photos of NS cars still marked as Southern during this trip and will be adding these to my Southern Railfan web site during the next update. A couple of unique car that in I found in Spartanburg are below: hogshead tobacco cars, track panel, and cranes on flat.

I went to Spartanburg specifically to find NS's Hayne shops. Hayne was used by Southern to repair both passenger and freight cars. The above photos were taken South of the shops, but I kept thinking that the shops were further south of where I was, and did not find them. I was wrong. All that I had to do was to look at my maps and go a block north. The topo map and image below are from Terra Server. The above photos were taken in the bottom right hand corner of the topo map, and the corresponding place is not on the satellite image.

General Electric designs and builds large gas turbines for power plants at this facility. Based here are GE's two large (16 axle) depressed flat GEGX cars that are used to deliver the largest turbines. The smaller turbines are shipped on 8 and 12 axle flat cars. One of the two large 16 axle GEGX depressed flat cars was visible behind the security fence, and many 8 axle flat cars were lined up outside of the security fence. other shots

Below is an aerial image of the GE plant from Terra Server. This image was created from multiple downloaded images that were pasted together to create the larger image. The photos above were taken from the parking lot at the top center of the photo.

Motive Power Equipment - Gantt, SC

Motive Power is a scrapper and dealer of used locomotives. There was an interesting collection of equipment being scrapped/recycled. Sorry, some of these photos were shot into the sun.

This is not a railfan friendly place. Take pictures from outside the fence!

Pickens Railroad is a shortline in the North West part of South Carolina. They were one of the last railroads to use Baldwin diesels in freight service. Engine #2 is still used occasionally. The Baldwin's have been replaced by GE U Boats.

I want to kick myself, I spent four and one half years in college twenty miles away from Pickens, and never knew about the railroad.

Pickens operates two sections of track from a connection with the NS at Easely, South Carolina to Pickens and from Anderson to Belton to Honea Path, this part of the line is leased from the NS. They also operate CSX's track in Anderson. The first batch of photos was taken around the engine house in Pickens.

The small six wheel switcher is a Plymouth engine. It was neat to see the GE UBoat RMGX 5046 up on wood blocks with out its trucks.

For more on the Pickens Railway see Joe Hinson's web page.

Pickens Railroad - Gluck, SC

Gluck is a small town south of Anderson

Railroad Historical Center - Greenwood, SC

I remember passing by this place multiple times as a teenager (30 + years ago), but we never stopped. During my last trip through Greenwood, a couple of years ago, I looked for it, but could not find it. It was pouring down rail, and the trees hid the train. It used to be open only a couple of days a year around July 4, but it is not open a couple of days a month. This is a private railroad museum. As usual, it is not open when I am there! It is hard to get photos, from the outside and from photos I seen of the inside, they are hard to get too. The museum has one steam locomotive, ex-Rockton & Rion #19 (2-8-2), multiple passenger cars and a caboose.

Norfolk Southern - Augusta, GA

The only thing going on with the NS at the Augusta yard when I was there was flat switching, and a short freight lead by a UP unit that came through. The first photo is unique, it shows the car cushioning that looks like it has been pulled out.

Norfolk Southern - Warrenville, SC

The following shots were taken on the SA line between Warrenville (MP 179.1) and Langley (MP 182)

L&C Railway - Lancaster, SC

The Lancaster and Chester is another neat South Carolina shortline. It used to be all SW end cabs but is now using leased GP 38-2 units (LLPX).

Just as I got to Lancaster, the SW's were being shuttled around in front of the engine house. There was no place to shoot these except over the fence while staying off private property.
The MoW equipment was parked outside of the industrial park that is owned by the L&C. The Leased GP 38-2's were parked next to Thysseen Krupp.
For more information on the L&C see Joe Hinson's web page.

Siemens Westinghouse - Charlotte, NC

Siemens Westinghouse makes turbine-generator for electric utilities at their plant in Charlotte. These generators are usually shipped on 8 or 12 axle flat cars.

Below is an arial image of the Siemens-Westinghouse plant from Terra Server. This image was created from multiple downloaded images that were pasted together to create the larger image. The photos above were taken from the road on the left side of the image.

The resolution is great, Notice that you can see many rail cars on both the left and right sides, and along the bottom of the facility. These appear to be large flat cars. Empties in on the right and loads out on the left.

For more than 1000 photos of large flat cars, click on the link at the bottom of this page.

Other South Carolina Photos

Almost 2000 photos at Railroad Picture Archives.Net

Almost 500 photos at Rail Picture.Net

Places that I missed this trip

• NS Hayne Shops - Spartanburg, SC
• Republic Locomotive Works - Greenville, SC
• CSX Maxwell Yard, Greenwood, SC
• Laurens, SC
• Newberry, SC
• Chester, SC

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