Operation Lifesaver

In 2014, CSX 900020 was in and around Seneca IL. In 2016, it showed up here in Kingsport. It’s been in Kingsport yard and out by Eastman since then, but it’s in pretty bad shape now. Operation Live Saver was up and running in the early 2000s for this CSX area (that’s where I got this pin). Operation Red Block was something entirely different.

Building Bridges from our Past to our Future

Calvin Sneed’s first book, with some of the 11,800+ bridge pictures he’s posted to bridgehunter.com, is now available (College Press ISBN: 978-1-5323-4369-8).

Tim Cable and I interviewed Calvin on Thinking Out Loud morning show on AM910 WJCW radio.  Truss bridges, mostly, are a passion for Calvin.  And he knows his stuff.

Jordan Spreader

jordanspreader  This much-used Jordan Spreader, SBD 774760, was sitting in the eastern part of Kingsport yard back in 2012.  I thought it might have been used to clear tunnels of ice.  That was fanciful.  When I looked it up, I found that the unit is used to dig and clear ditches, regulate ballast and even to plow snow.  Sturdy and reliable, and, of course, it’s been replaced by more modern things…so it goes.

#32 Holston tunnel

If you’d been hanging out around this area in, say, 1777, you would have seen a fort down near the river, at a location that’s probably been obliterated by Tennessee Eastman or the plant that preceded it.  That would have been Fort Patrick Henry (nowhere near the dam that carries the name).  However, the tunnel wouldn’t have been here, since it was completed in 1913 or so.  There are just three more tunnels in Tennessee before the rail line heads into the Appalachian Mountains (and that’s ap-UH-latch-ian, not ap-UH-lace-ian) (’round here).  This tunnel is 154′ long.  First is the western portal, then a look back at the eastern portal.  A bridge here (which can be clearly seen on Google Earth) overlooks the old Kingsport waterworks and the never-completed 3-C railbed.  Over the river and on to Colonial Heights.