(The Cleveland Plain Dealer posted the following article by Michael O’Malleyon its website on June 8.)
BEREA, Ohio — Andy Inserra squints westward through a set of binoculars, fixing his sight on the nose of an oncoming eastbounder.
“Canadian National,” he says. “Pretty rare in this area. Probably hauling pickup trucks from the Ford plant in Minneapolis.”
The locomotive rolls closer now, and Inserra and others along the edge of the track can see she’s moving at a clip, 7,000 tons of metal gunning hard on an earth-shaking run.
The track-side watchers click cameras and mark notebooks as the big engine charges by with an air-horn blast, spewing hot gusts of wind and diesel fumes.
In a minute, the show is over. And the train-watchers look down the tracks, this way and that, hoping for another inbounder.
“It gets in your blood,” says Inserra.
Inserra, a civil-engineering student, and his father, Joe, a software engineer, have traveled all the way from their home in Minneapolis just to watch trains in Berea.
They belong to a large network of people who watch, log and take pictures of trains. They are known as “railfans,” and they congregate wherever they can catch a glimpse of a working track, spur or switchyard.
The best places are called “hot spots,” and Berea is known nationally as such a place.
The Cleveland suburb, which has been featured in train magazines, is one of the few places in the region where the two major Eastern railroad lines – CSX and Norfolk Southern – come together.
A story in the December issue of Railfan & Railroad magazine shows a photo of a locomotive passing the Berea train tower and refers to the city as “the railfan hot spot of the Cleveland area.”
Berea is to train-watchers what Hawk Mountain, Pa., is to bird-watchers.
The place to watch is along Depot Street, next to The Station restaurant, a former train station built in 1876. More than 100 trains pass this roadside hot spot every 24 hours.
“Any train from the Mississippi River Valley to the Atlantic seaboard has to go through Berea,” said Dave McKay of South Euclid, who has taken 45,000 photographs of trains.
To non-railfans, locomotives might all look the same. But there are hundreds of styles and models, and fervent train watchers know the guts of each one – its horsepower, weight and age and how many were built. They know what the train is hauling and where it’s going. They even know if it’s running on time.
They come equipped with cameras, field glasses, log books and radio scanners to listen to the dispatchers, engineers and yard men.
Sometimes an engineer tosses a souvenir – yesterday’s rolled-up work order – out of the cab window atop the locomotive. To a railfan, it’s like catching a foul ball in the bleachers.
On a recent day, Carl Luther of Canton is at the Berea hot spot watching the lead engine – an SD60M – on a Norfolk Southern train working westward with a line of piggyback trucks on flat cars.
“That’s an old Conrail unit repainted,” he says. “I can tell by the sound of the horn.”
Nearby, Ed Krejny of Strongsville is in his car with a scanner, listening to a yard master in Cleveland. “That’s Joe talking,” he says.
Railfans are attracted to the power and speed of these giant machines, for few would agree that today’s snub-nose, bulldog-ugly locomotives are things of graceful beauty. They don’t come with names like Mustang or Skylark. They are a C40-9W, an SD70MAC or a GP38-2.
Norfolk Southern engines are black with horse logos painted on the noses. Railfans facetiously call them “black beauties.”
Western trains – Union Pacific or Burlington Northern Santa Fe – generally have more color. And when one of their locomotives comes through here, it is referred to as “foreign power.”
On a recent day, two big, red SD60s of the former Soo Line poked into Berea, catching the eye of Dick Croy of Westlake.
“Hello, hello,” he said, greeting the train as if a beautiful woman were riding on the cowcatcher. “This is a rare one.”
Some railfans are daily addicts who read train magazines and talk in railfan chat rooms on the Internet. Others get to trackside whenever they get a spare hour.
Jim Smigelski, a retired telecommunications engineer from North Royalton, is somewhere in between. He said train-watching is a good way to kill time and is cheap entertainment.
“I try to get out a couple times a week,” he said. “I’ll call my cousin and say, ‘You got some time? Let’s go see what’s runnin’.’ ”
And that usually means a trip down Depot Street.
“Between Buffalo and Chicago, this is the best spot.”