Pretty much every morning, a CSXT crew takes a set of locomotives from the small yard at Brunswick, Maryland, to the rock quarry at Millville, West Virginia. They travel west a spell on the busy twin-track Metropolitan Subdivision until they get to the Potomac crossing at Harpers Ferry. Once they arrive at this bridgeborne junction, they branch off onto the less-traveled Shenandoah Subdivision for the rest of the way to Millville. At Millville, they grab a train of hopper cars filled with crushed rock. Then the "Rockrunner" heads back the way it came, past Brunswick, all the way to Bladensburg, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. There, the crew leaves the train of loads to be unloaded and picks up a string of empties (the loads from the previous day). The crew then hauls these empties back to Millville (where they will be loaded for another trip the next day). Finally, the crew takes its locomotives light (no cars) back to Brunswick to tie up for the day.
In this photo, the crew is on the final of their four legs. Sitting engines light on the bridge over the Potomac at Harpers Ferry late in the afternoon, the crew awaits a proceed signal indication so they can move off the Shen sub onto the Met sub, scoot through the tunnel, and head for home.
(Photo taken Spring 2006.)
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