Ferroequinology's video: Chasing the Rio Grande in 2017

Filmed on July 30, 2017 This was the most fun I've had in a while! Chasing a train out in the country. Here's the story: We had some extra time during a trip to Ohio and decided that Bellevue was a good place to watch trains. The map showed a huge hump yard north of town and a couple of wyes in the middle of town.    We took main street west into Bellevue. The first thing we saw when we arrived was a Rio Grande engine sitting right in the middle of the bridge across the road! But by the time we parked on a side street and got out of the car, the train started to move and we missed getting a shot of the Rio Grande engine at the front. That was the original reason we chased it. Trying to get a shot of that Rio Grande engine. It wasn't that hard; his long train was still going slowly over the wye. It was a success. Then I realized: he wasn't going that fast; maybe we could try to catch him again further down the line. So that's what we did. I followed the tracks on the map, while we looked across the corn fields to see if we had caught up yet. We had a lot of fun catching him a few more times. We would turn on a road that looked like we would be able to get to the crossing before him and have a minute or two to set up. Then put the tripods and drone back in the car and get ahead of him again. But I was still confused. What was an old Rio Grande engine doing out in the middle of Ohio? Then we met someone while at the grain mill who was chasing the same train. He knew why, and told us the story: The owner of the Wheeling and Lake Erie, a small railroad in the area, used to be the vice-president of the Rio Grande. When it closed in 1988, he started his own railway in Ohio called the Wheeling and Lake Erie. He bought 2 of Rio Grande's engines, which were up for sale because of its closing, and now uses them on regular service on his line. He still refuses to have them repainted.  We chased the train all the way from Bellevue, through Monroeville, Norwalk, and Hartland, to the crossing at Zenobia Road; milepost 75. The total distance was about 25 miles. He was stopped by the crossing at Zenobia Road for a long time, possibly for a crew change, or possibly to let another train pull into the yard in the grain mill from the other direction. We had to leave before he started up again. Even though I knew what I was looking at the whole time, it wasn't until I took that shot at the 31:50 mark that it I really realized that this is an authentic Rio Grande engine, exactly as it would have looked when in use in the mountains. It's probably exactly identical to what it would have looked like when it was pulling trains for the Rio Grande, except maybe modern cab controls or radio, and a small "WE" reporting mark over the engine number. That may even be it's original number. Here's a nicely done map of the line I found afterwards:  http://www.wlerwy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SystemMap.jpg The color scheme and font of the Wheeling and Lake Erie is even the same as Rio Grande's.