September 9, 1979
Lots of phone calls made to Buffalo, Philadelphia, Power Control, etc, to move locos N&W 361 and 408 from Buffalo to Newark for the soon-to-start Ontario Midland Railroad. "Supposedly" all is set and they will move.....
September 9, 1980.
Ontario Midland was handling a move of fresh pears for Gerber. The pears were loaded in bulk in BNFE reefers at Williamson Storage & Ice, and moved to ....Ashville NC?....via Cinci-SOU. At this date, they had been out of cars for a few days and the shipper was getting antsy. Two cars did move to Lyons but too late to make the local's train to OMID.
Train ELSY-8 had 12 BNFE cars, 21st to 32nd deep in the train. After a lot of begging, pleading and persuading, Operations and the Chief Dispatcher agreed to have the main line train stop at Newark and set the cars off on the PRR connection so OMID could make a special move to get them.
The OMID crew was on duty at 8:30PM, and after confirming the cars had been dropped, headed south to get them using engine 36. Upon arriving at Newark, they got permission from the CR dispatcher to go down to get the cars. The headlight probed the darkness - and showed only empty rails. After checking all the way to the Track 1 mainline switch, it was obvious the cars were not there. By this time the afternoon dispatcher had gone, the night guy didn't know what to say. Supposedly the cars had been dropped, but it looked like they had been taken through east.
About to give up and return north empty-handed, the OMID made a request of the dispatcher. Permission was granted to run west on the CR controlled siding to CP15 at the west end of Newark. And there, on the OMID Marion Branch, were the 12 cars!
So the cars were taken east, shoved up the connection to OMID, to Mud Mills siding. There the engine ran around, took the cars north, and made the delivery to the customer at 0-dark-30. The crew marked off at 0215 (the conductor facing a 45 minute drive home and a 6AM start at his regular job). Just another adventure in short-line railroading!