A one month old Ferromex auto rack from the Trinity plant in Mexico follows the same trend set by Trinity for its rebuilds of older BNSF racks, that is the painting of the TTX flatcar into the sam... (more)

A day after leaving CSX's Gentilly Yard in New Orleans, manifest Q612-25 creeps through Opelika, Alabama, as the train moves on towards Tilford Yard in Atlanta.

The typically night time running Q600 makes a rare daylight appearance as it rolls into Opelika with 50 cars in tow. Even more exciting than catching this train in the day is seeing it being pull... (more)

A Roger Puta Photograph

52 cars of sand make up today’s K736 as heads north through the city of Opelika passing the remains of a former Western Railway of Alabama coaling tower that presently resides here.

Southern local crew works around Opelika. An important segment of the business then was wood/wood products, as evidenced by the many bulkhead flats in the photo. At the right edge can be seen co... (more)

My most most frequently sighted - and least favorite - locomotive when I started fanning in the early 1970s in east Alabama was the Southern GP38 (or GP38-2). Square, black, run-of-the-mill blah.... (more)

The last locomotive delivered in WofA's gaudy black-on-black-on-black scheme waits for a Southern freight to clear the crossing.

The wires have come down, but the pole line remains, some poles even having what look like new crossarms. Thirty years later, this location s probably completely closed in with vegetation.

One of the Southern agents in Opelika either had a warped sense of humor, or maybe just did not like me. Whatever the reason, he on multiple occasions gave incorrect info about what trains were w... (more)

A trio of SD40-2s leads an eastbound freight past the last remnant of the passenger platforms that once ran down the north and west sides of the shared (CofG/SOU/NS and WofA/FL/SBD/CSX) Opelika de... (more)

Early in the Family Lines era a pair of SCL Hamlet-NOLA run-through trains were established utilizing the Western Railway of Alabama between Atlanta and Montgomery. In the photo, 216 - with the us... (more)

Southern's long-distance local bumps across the Western with the usual assortment of log flats. In the background is a boxcar still in CofG colors, and the hood of a Southern diesel, one of two t... (more)

Returning from a run to Lafayette and Roanoke with a short train, #7 has just entered the WofA main for a short trackage rights hop down the hill to Opelika. The Southern folks are probably eyein... (more)

Another transitional model, the C39-8's boxy form-follows-function look reminded some fans of late model Alcos. That's CSX's former Western Railway of Alabama that 8572 is crossing, and the shado... (more)