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Welcome to the Indian River Secondary Job Descriptions page!!
Below are job descriptions for Harrington trains that traverse the Indian River Secondary.

Last Updated 6/15/06

Before venturing into the little town of Harrington, you should have an idea of what the yard looks like and how it operates.  To get to Harrington Yard, you will need to be on Rte 13.  When coming into town, you will need to make a turn west at the intersection that has the Hardee's.  As you can see, I use landmark directions, and will continue to.  Continue west down this road for about a 1/4 mile.  At this point, you will reach the tracks.  The station will be on your right, and the old tower will be on your left.  There is ample parking near the station without interfering with where the crews park their cars, or being on railroad property. If the station is not busy with people, and not many cars are parked within the vicinity, this is a sign of total lack of activity.  Also look for crew vans ready to ferry crews around.  These can be evidence of action somewhere else on the peninsula, or worst case, that a crew just got off a train and has taxied back to the office.

As you stand by the station, the main yard will be south of you, just past the tower.  Looking north, the siding and main will run together for roughly a mile and a half.  The northernmost part of the siding is referred to as the North End of Harrington Siding, and begins at the second crossing north of the station.  It is here that you may find a local or mainline train waiting to get into the yard.  In front of the tower are the crossovers that must be used by any train running down the Indian River Secondary. Next to the crossovers are the two tracks for shop cars.  These may be accessed from switches on both sides. The wye breaks off a few hundred feet past the crossovers.  At the beginning of the wye is a lead to the engine servicing tracks known as "The Pit," and "East Passing Siding." When looking at the pit, you will see the wye curve out of sight.  Where the north end of the wye connects with the south leg of the wye it becomes the Indian River Running Track. This is very easily accessed via a public crossing, East Street, almost directly on the connection. The south leg of the wye is also comes across East Street, and this will often be used by the yard crews for turning power or cars, or even taking local H42 out on the Indian River.  At the south end of the yard, there is only one other track besides the main.  There is a crossing that connects directly to Route 13 at this location.  Most of the switching takes place between this road and Fairgrounds Road at a location known as the "New Crossover."  This allows cars to be switched in the middle of the yard with three tracks. At the New Crossover, the farthest track east is known as the Northward Siding. This track runs all the way to the south end of the yard, and in fact the whole length of the yard, but only as far north as the Running Track switches is it known as the Northward Siding. Here, it becomes Harrington Siding up until the switch at the north end. The middle track at the New Crossover is the main, while the westernmost track is the Southward Siding. This diverges off the main directly where the Northward becomes Harrington Siding. Confused yet? You can see switching at the New Crossover from a road that parallels the yard out of town to the south.

Most communications are done on Road Channel 1, 160.800mhz, with crews often talking to the yardmaster. When more than one crew is in the yard, it is common for a crew to use Road Channel 2, 161.070mhz. Please do not venture onto Norfolk Southern property while in the area, and remember that virtually no one can grant you permission to be there just by saying it is OK. There are plenty of places to view the yard on public property, and NS takes trespassing very seriously. The Conrail-era days of driving into the middle of the wye or other areas of the yard to take pictures are gone. Heed warning.

"Alley"   This is the northern Yard Limit, located at Paradise Alley Lane off of Route 13.

"Jack"   This is the southern Yard Limit, located on a curve about a mile south of town, parallel to
                Route 13. It can be seen by looking south from Hammond Road.

"Ring"   This is the beginning of the Indian River Secondary, MP 1.5 on the Indian River Running Track.

"Milepost 2"   Just past RING, along the road east of town where H42 will sometimes be staged

"Milepost 4"   The western-most crossing in Houston, where H42 will be staged if over about 50 cars.

"The pit"   This is the one-track engine servicing facility is the farthest track to the east in the middle
                    of the wye.

"East Passing Siding"     This is the second track that engines will be kept on, and is located directly
                                                west of the pit.

"Harrington Siding"     This piece of the siding is from the extreme north end to the crossover
                                           switches for the running track.

"Northward Siding"     After Harrington Siding gets to the running track, it becomes the Northward
                                          Siding for the remainder of its length through the south end of the yard.

"Southward Siding"     This track diverges on the west side of the mainline and runs from the
                                           running track crossovers to the New Crossover.

"North End"  This is the northernmost area of Harrington Siding, where 95% of the time you can
                          find the 13G's cars, possibly with power already on them.

"The Fairgrounds"   This is simply Fairground Road, which crosses the main, Northward and Southward
                                       sidings.

"The New Crossover"   Located between Fairgrounds Road and the south end, this is a critical
                                             switching location.

"The River"   This is the term that Delmarva railroaders use for the Indian River Secondary.

"The Westbound"   The 13G will often be referred to as this.

Local H42 competes with the H94 for the hardest job on the shore. The 42's train will typically be made up by one of the yard crews prior to departure, but if they have a small train this may not be the case. The crew may have to take their power off of the pit, put it on the train, and do a brake test. Otherwise, they'll get on board their train wherever it was left for them, such as at the Icehouse, or at MP 2 or MP 4 on the Indian River depending on the train's size and the need to have it out of the way in the yard.

Once out of town, the train will roll unabated until Milford, roughly 8 miles. While working southbound there are three industries that can be worked in Milford, the first of which being Southern States. This small siding may receive fertilizer on any day, generally in small one to three-car cuts. Southern States is located a few hundred yards west (railroad north) of the Route 113 crossing in town. After working here, if such is done, the train might head just a mile or so south before stopping again. There are two industries on the edge of town, those being Mil-Del and Masten's Lumber. Masten's receives lumber quite frequently, and ever-increasingly in late 2005, while Mil-Del receives a boxcar or two only every few months at best.

It should be noted that this Milford work is also handled by H4E, H39, H43, or an extra crew, all on occasion and with no real pattern. For the longest time, H42 was doing none of the Milford work, and Milford was being worked entirely push-pull from Harrington by one of those aforementioned crews. However, as of early 2006, the Milford work has once again fallen on H42.

Once out of Milford, the train will get up to the 40mph track speed.  While normally rolling all the way south through Ellendale, they may stop to set off a few cars for the Delaware Coastline Railroad interchange. Traffic at this interchange is small, currently only ranking at a bunch of empty hopper cars that are being stored on the line.. On a normal day, the local will rock south to Georgetown, where it may stop to set off or pick up at the Delaware Coastline Railroad interchange. Once again, traffic tends to be small, but in grain season you may cuts of hoppers in addition to the usual sporadic stone for Gravel Hill. Also included in the interchange is HOKX hopper cars for shipment to ICI/SPI Polyoils  in Lewes on the DCL. The local may cut off north of Georgetown and come in to work the interchange, this if the DCL cars are head out and they have too much trailing freight to work the interchange without blocking crossings.

We now move into the secondary's namesake town of Indian River. While the only town in this area that the tracks run through is Millsboro, the branch into the NRG power plant touches base with the actual area of Indian River.  Truth be known, Millsboro is nearly at Indian River, and if you wait for the train to go through town, it is impossible to beat it to the wye.  Just south of Millsboro is the Vlasic Pickle Company. Traffic into and out of the plant is boxcars, ranging from one to five at a time. This was a commonly worked industry, but is now sadly off limits to the public. There have been rumors that Vlasic stopped getting rail cars after some sort of disagreement with the railroad, but this is still unknown to be true or not.

When reaching the wye, the crew has a few options, depending on what tracks are open at Indian River, which consists of A, B, and C tracks. If the crew has a lot of coal or stone to be set in the plant, they may opt to go down the north leg of the wye and head straight in. This can only be done if two tracks are open, as it takes one track to set the cars on, and one to run around the train on.  Since the tracks are usually occupied, the crew will back the train off, first pulling past the wye, and then backing it down the south leg. Once this work is done, they will pick up whatever cars must be taken back north out of the plant, either shop cars or stone empties from VFL. All northbound empties may be put with other northbound traffic and left in Indian River if the crew is heading south to Frankford with a lot of cars. I did mention stone above. Who would figure that a power plant would receive stone. Actually, through a separate corporation called VFL Industries, there is a significant volume of stone dropped off at the plant. These shipments range from 30 to 100 cars at a time, and are put on C track, off of which is the lead to VFL. The cars are worked with a Delaware Coast Line locomotive within the plant. It should be mentioned that the VFL operation is out of the public view, and I don't actually know of a way to see it without trespassing, so please obtain permission from proper channels with the power company and VFL before taking this action. I know many who have been successful with this. VFL is arguably the second largest industry, next to NRG of course, on the Indian River Secondary (though it is not as constant as others). Still, you can expect large shipments of stone on the train that are directed for this company.

Frankford is much like Pocomoke in that there is usually a lot of work to be done and very little space to do it in. The small runaround track makes it pretty much impossible to run around cars, so a shove from Indian River is almost always the case. The crew will shove south from Indian River, using the wye to turn their train. If there is a lot of cars to go in and out of Frankford (such as 50 in, 50 out), they will first go get all the cars out of Frankford, and then come back and take down what they have. Mountaire receives nice-size shipments of cars, usually ranking around ten to fifteen. You can expect the crew to work this mill everyday, working the feed and bean tracks at the plant, though Mountaire has a track mobile to assist with unloading. The Maryland & Delaware receives small feed cuts as well, however they also sport 50-car grain trains and 25-car stone trains as needed (heavier in the summer). Now put together a grain train, a stone train, as well as usual northbound interchange traffic and you have what is called a mess.

After sorting out the mess in Frankford, which can take hours on the wrong day, the train is finally ready to head north after a brake test. Unusual to Delmarva locals, this train seriously works both north and southbound, and the run for home isn't easy for the H42. They will first pick-up whatever they left in Indian River, if anything. After this is done, they can get a break until the town of Milford. Work to be done here is at Milford Cold Storage, and usually includes reefer cars both in and out of the single-track siding. On the same track, spotted in front of the Cold Storage cars, is Grow-Mark, who gets fertilizer in covered hoppers. So either place could be the cause of the stop. From there they continue north (actually straight west at that point). But four miles outside of Harrington there is another cold storage facility in the little town of Houston (How-stun). They get reefers in and out, but not the bigger ones as Milford often gets. Once this is accomplished, the train may finally run the remaining miles home. Back at Harrington, the crew will usually put the whole train on the southward siding, or the north end of Harrington Siding if 13G's cars are out of the way, with the power back to the pit.

A key thing to determining which train in Harrington Yard is the H42 is to look for stone cars, coal cars, and lumber cars. A heavy amount of any of these will give the 42 away, in fact if anything, look for stone cars. Unfortunately, due to the degree of work that the local does, it is not uncommon for the local to outlaw on the Indian River Secondary. Adding to the hard shifting of the train is the fact that most industries have cars in and out at the same time, making work a bit longer. Town layouts further plague the train, as the location of industries often require the crew to cut the train far away so as not to block crossings while switching. All this added together will often do the H42 in, and work will be finished the next day, or by a relief crew such as H4E.

H4E

The H4E was put on in 2005 to be the H42's relief crew. This was meant to ensure that H42 always made it over the road, and probably more importantly, that coal and hopper trains going to/from Indian RIver had a crew to take them. Though the bulk of their work is intended to be done on the Indian River Secondary, this crew can show up anywhere for anything. They can be the H94 relief crew in Dover, or even the yard relief in Harrington, as well as seen passing through Harrington while taking coal trains from Clayton to Indian River (or pulling empty hoppers to Clayton). Be advised that their assignment varies and that you could see them doing anything anywhere. They work Sunday-Friday, with a call window of 10:00-18:00.

NRG has a power plant at Indian River, making these coal trains necessary for the shore. These trains are welcomed guests, and usually roll right through Harrington and on down the Indian River Running Track to the Indian River Secondary. The trains are always powered with two or three six axles, the standard for coal trains.  Indian River is set up by A, B, and C tracks. If there is a track to run around on, the coal train crew will pull the train directly into the plant, running the power around on the empty track. If all tracks are filled, they must use the south leg of the wye to back the train off. They have always traveled the secondary in complete darkness, due to the 22:30 window on the Northeast Corridor, but may be seen in daylight if the H42 or H4E (or an extra crew) takes one down to Indian River.

The empty hopper trains are different from their loaded cousins. These trains are often seen on the Indian River in daylight, as local crews H42 and H4E will be used to put together hopper trains and bring them to Harrington for a road crew to board and take west to Enola. Otherwise, hopper trains will be called around 17:00 in Harrington and be in darkness by the time the crew taxis down and gets the train together and rolling north for Harrington.

Coal train loaded and empty symbols are as follows:

The H&K stone facility at Millsboro, De., just north of the wye for the NRG power plant at Indian River, receives approximately three 70-or-so-car stone trains (via the mine at Birdsboro, Pa.) per week to be unloaded at the plant. The call time for the loaded southbound 67T is usually around midnight in Edgemoor, so if they get held up they can be seen through Harrington or on the Indian River in early daylight. The crew will lay over in Harrington during the day, and then the train will run empty from Indian River to Edgemoor at night with a symbol of 67V (crew usually called in Harrington around 16:00). When the train is back in Edgemoor loaded (usually 24 hours after arriving in Edgemoor empty) the cycle starts again. These trains are yet another piece to the evening road train puzzle.

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