Around an hour after last week's blogpost, I received a call about a derailment at Lynch 3. My not so busy week took off as I made my way to document the event, in which can be seen in the Photography section of the website. The next day, we stopped by to see the rerailed motors before making our way to the Big Sandy. We made a brief stop in Shelby and then with word on the street about NS Heritables, we took off for Williamson. We had a pretty decent turn out; 8 trains in 4 hours, including NS 1069, the Virginian. Had a great time with fellow railfan Garrin Hatfield, and it made for a great trip.

MT - February 15th, 2024.

Recently, we set out one Saturday morning in pursuit of a Hazard mine run working Yellow Creek. Some of my all time favorite scenes are found in these tight Eastern Kentucky hollers where the L&N battled the landscape in their pursuit of the black gold that has carried this region for over a century. Something about witnessing a bright future GE hug the road in such tight proximity as coal cars rattle across jointed rail down the holler gives me a sense of the nostalgia I never got to witness, all paired with the invasive kudzu vines creeping over the tracks, reaching as far as they can before being severed by the wheels of thousands of millions of tons of steel and coal. This was just a brief thought in my mind as R233 rolls out of the holler with a cut of loads from Yellow Creek after a passing storm heavily saturated the Eastern Kentucky landscape.

MT - July 19th, 2025