Marion, Ohio is located about 35 miles north of the state capitol of Columbus. Marion used to feature trackage owned by Erie Lackawanna, Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Chesapeake & Ohio. While there is still a bit of Erie trackage remaining under CSX ownership, the other three lines are the mainlines through Marion. Running from Toledo to Columbus is the former C&O line which is now CSX. Running from Bellevue to Columbus is the former Pennsylvania Railroad, now owned by Norfolk Southern(formerly N&W). These two lines run together in a southerly direction past on either side of the Marion Station. At this point each crosses a double diamond of the 2-track east-west CSX line from Cleveland to St. Louis, which was formerly New York Central, and more recently Conrail, which is now owned by CSX. So CSX has two lines through Marion, but NS actually runs more train normally through per day, or so it seems.

Besides seeing a wealth of different trains and at varied times of the day, you will see a lot varied motive power. Off the top of my head I remember CSX, NS, Conrail, BNSF, Soo line, Canadian Pacific, Union Pacific, and more. On the C&O line trains make a connection to the line to St. Louis as we see some trains on this section, as well as a daily local that runs from a small yard near the former Erie shops west of the Diamond. We catch this local a couple of times on two trips, and they use older power and a rare Erie bay window caboose with the yard crew. These units can also be seen switching cuts of cars in the yard where there is a GATX car repair facility.

We also got inside the AC tower located at the diamond with the former Conrail and NS tracks. We get a few tidbits of info from one of the Marion volunteers that man the place on Saturdays. We see how the board works, and yes it still works, although its not hooked up to live tracks or signals anyway. We also see trains shot from the tower, and through windows to mix up the ground level shots.

On one visit we even stayed so late in the afternoon, we were able to shoot a few trains from the north of the diamond and get sun on them. Boy, I could only imagine what this place would have been like around 1950 with all the great steam action. Today Marion provides a lot of train activity and if you stick close to the diamond you won't miss a single one. This show is also in wide-screen like our Deshler program. Unlike Deshler this one features Norfolk Southern as well as CSX.

There was one day we spent in Deshler and we had a malfunction with our audio, and did not discover it until the next day back at home. We were going to skip it entirely, but there were some really nice shots in there, including one with the local and caboose. So this became a FREE bonus set to a music piece which I am sure you will enjoy. The local usually sported at least one GP38-2. This was video taped between 2008-2010. Copyright 2011.