Producer: T&W
Locations: Bostic, Thurmond, Hamlet, Hinton, Clinchcross, Charlotte…
Timeframe: 1990s – 2003
Length: 52 minutes
T&W has ten years’ worth of CSX highlights in under an hour. Concentration is within Southern States. Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia. Locations are given, the specific years are not.
A single DVD-R. No main Chapter menu. A chapter advance function. No maps. Narrated show.
Image quality is generally, in the good- very good range. A horizontal distortion bar is present along the bottom of the screen. Edits can be slightly long in scene transistions. Not modern viewing standards. Live environmental audio. Railroad radio traffic is occasionally heard.
To the Trains… 👉
Begins in North Carolina. Action at Bostic Yard. A busy location with various freights. Train Q-696 from Irwin, Tennessee, enters the yard at a slow speed. Engine 7691 C40-8W leads the freight as it stops for a crew change. Onward to Hamlet for this move.
On Q-697. Predecessor paint at the yard. Seaboard System 7033/ 1151. Appears in an arrival lash-up. Coal traffic is also seen here.
Thurmond, WV. An SD50 8556 leads a Grain Train past the old depot.
During a rainstorm. CSX road slug 2245 is at Prince, WV. This train is from Quinmont Yard. It rolls empty coal hoppers past the Amtrak station. En route to the Piney Creek branch. SD40-2 numbers 7450/ 7478/ road slug 2244 are trailing.
At Hamlet, NC. Two GP40-2 units, 6206, 6103 and GE 234, with a freight from the east.
Check the D&H stenciled Reading boxcar. Good looks at rolling stock. Model Railroaders will appreciate these.
AC44 numbers 69 and 26 hit a crossing on a unit coal to Wilmington, NC.
SD50 8531 and SD40-2 8114 slowly move out of Hinton Yard. Another covered hopper train.
Empty hoppers are hauled at Clinchcross, North Carolina. This one travels from Waycross. GA. to Irwin, TN. Number 7809 is a C40-8W and leads two more locomotives.
Q-697 pulls into Charlotte, NC.
The Best of CSX
Here is a proper show that has a good narrative. Videography is good. Weather is a variable that affects lighting. Gray skies dominate. The soundtrack is nicely balanced. Time passes quickly with constant train movements.
Railfans and Model Railroaders can find useful footage. Train consists being of particular interest to modelers. Fallen flag freight cars (many are grain cars) can be found.
As far as a ‘best of’ is concerned. Expected some different locations from the T&W catalog. LaGrange, CSX Loops, Fosteria, Folkston, and more. Maybe this predates those CSX titles of theirs. Hence, there is no effect on the show rating.
Overall, a pretty good release by this inconsistent label. At least this one has narration!
Rating: 3 Stars
American Train Video Reviews 