The D703 runs into Johnstown Monday through Friday. The train usually arrives in town between 8 and 9 in the morning. Depending on the work for the day they will usually leave between 10 and noon. The main reason for the existance of the line is the Pepsi transloading facility in downtown. The Pepsi plant in town is the main bottling plant for western PA, MD, WV, as well as parts of VA and OH. The actual plant is located a couple of miles out of town on top of the hill so the only way to get the corn syrup to the plant is via truck, currently they run two trucks continuously through out the day and empty close to two 15,000 gal tank cars a day. A normal run for the D703 starts off by dropping off the corn syrup cars for Pepsi outside of the transload facility, next they will procede to the Conemaugh and Black Lick interchange yard located on Washington St. in downtown. The yard there is only four tracks and they will have to do some shuffling to get everything in order here if they have a large pickup. This is where they will pick up the new cars coming from the Freight Car America plant in town. In most cases they will take between 15 to 30 new cars at a time. They usually will arrive here at the interchange around 9:30 - 10 am. They will be met by the Conemaugh and Black Lick crew to help them in sorting out the cars in the small yard. On a normal day they will usually drop off about 10 gons for a local scrap dealer that is switched by the C&BL. The work here at Washington St. usually takes between 20 minutes to an hour. The yard is readily accesible from Washington St. and Clinton St.. This is the end of the line for the S&C Sub so the power will be run around the train and they will get ready to head back south. The D703 usually runs with the same crew everyday,and being that they are out in the middle of no where as far as Jacksonville is concerned, they take their time doing there work. It is best to leave here when they are performing the air test if you don't want to sit in traffic for 15 minutes while they snake their way back out of down town. Once the interchange work is done here they head back to Pepsi to do their work there. Once back at Pepsi they will drop the train on the main and then begin to switch out the corn syrup cars. Depending on how the cars were emptied this could take between 15 to 40 minutes to complete. They will also usually switch the Safety Clean spur which is right next to Pepsi once a week. After this work is done they will procede south to Sandyvale yard. The yard is about a quarter mile long with 5 tracks. It is easily accessible by taking Horner St. to Messenger St.. Messenger St. crosses the yard at grade at the south end. If going here it is best to park in the Johnstown Chemical parking lot as Messenger St. deadends after crossing the yard and you can get "trapped" there if the train is long. In the yard they will usually drop off a covered hopper or two for Johnstown Corp on the former Johnstown and Stoney Creek track which will be the track closest to the Johnstown Chem. building. If you are lucky you will get to see the self propelled crane from Johnstown Corp. come out and pick up the covered hoppers. The D703 will also drop off any extra cars for Pepsi in the yard and also the occaisional MOW car. They will also reblock their train if needed. From there they will get reeady to head out of town, however not before making a pitt stop at the grocery store across the river from the yard for lunch. This will usually give you an extra 10 minutes to get a jump on them if you plan on chasing the train south. The next stop that they will make south of Johnstown is at the ABEX plant located near the town of Hooversville. They can spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half here switching. The plant isn't really accesible from public property though. After that they will work some local industries in the town of Somerset, mainly the Agway which is right next to the yard. They will also occasionally drop off the new cars in the yard here. This seems to be the current practice, they will usually drop cars here until they have around 80 to 100 cars, then a solid train will be run out of Somerset to either Connellsville or Cumberland depending on where the cars are headed. From Somerset is only about 10 miles to the junction with the Keystone sub in Rockwood. There are no industries in Rockwood that are switched any more so the train is tied down here in the small yard. The cars off the train will then be picked up by a local out of Connellsville. Also of note on the S&C sub is the reopening of the Coleman Branch, which breaks off of the S&C sub a few miles north of Somerset. The branch is now owned by PBS coal and serves their newly reopened Cambria mine. They just started running trains up here about two weeks ago, so there is no word on how much traffic this will add. Also the Berlin Sub from Garrett to Berlin was abandoned and ripped up in the early '90's (I think '93). However it hadn't seen much of any traffic since the '60's, towards the end they only ran one train a week I think. I think that covers everything for the S&C sub, if you do get a chance, check it out, it is one part of CSX that thinks it's a shortline.
Scooter
