Hello everyone! I apologize for not having uploading for a while, I have been on vacation over the past week. Speaking of vacation, I hope all of you had a great Fourth of July week. Today's video is rather unique given the location of Seymour, Indiana.

Seymour, located in Southern Indiana, is a town about 60 miles north of Louisville and is along both the Louisville and Indiana Railroad (L&I) mainline (the ex-Pennsylvania Railroad line between Indianapolis and Louisville) and the CSX Indiana Subdivision (the former B&O mainline to St. Louis). If you follow CSX train news or CSX news, you may have heard of this small town of Seymour. Over the 18 months, CSX has been working with the L&I on a massive overhaul of the L&I mainline, doing this in order to increase the train capacity over the L&I as a means of re-routing CSX trains over the route and also onto the CSX Indiana Subdivision to Cincinnati. Thus the name "Home of the Re-Routes."

I visited this place for a couple days on my recent vacation down to Indiana, and thought I would take a visit since I was close enough to the place. At the moment, there are only about 8-10 trains per day since the L&I is still working on track improvements north of Seymour and won't be finished with the northern portion of the route to Indianapolis until the end of the year. By the end of the year, Seymour will see up to about 20-22 trains per day, mainly autoracks and manifest trains for CSX, as well as the Monday-Friday pair of L&I trains to and from Indianapolis.

While I was railfanning there, I primarily saw CSX trains. The big one I saw was Q204, one of the autoracks re-routed from the CSX LCL Subdivision (which is being converted to primarily directional running from Cincinnati to Louisville), but another daily train seen here is Q504, which runs from Louisville to Cincinnati via the Indiana Subdivision. These trains have been running here for quite some time, and with the increased track speeds and added sidings thanks to track upgrades, quite a few more autoracks and manifest trains will be arriving through here. Another train I did see here (not long after Q504) was Q574/Q576, another train arriving from Louisville and takes the Indiana Subdivision east to Cincinnati.

It certainly is great to see traffic returning to the junction, but unfortunately there isn't much west of Seymour anymore along the
ex-B&O line. The only train one sees is the daily local train running cars to small businesses and such; no through trains sadly go through west of town. CSX still owns the line between Seymour and Vincennes (home of the CSX Henderson Subdivision), but the future of the line is uncertain west of Vincennes. I've recently heard rumors that the Illinois Subdivision (the line west of Vincennes) will be sold off, but thats another story.

Finally, you may have noticed the railpark. In anticipation of the onslaught of trains, the city built this round-house style bathroom facility and parking lot as a means of attracting railfans. Considering that there isn't too much action in this side of Indiana aside from this spot and the aspect of increasing traffic, it does offer a nice perspective. When I visited, the final touches were still being added, but it should open by the end of the summer.

This spot will soon be big, and hopefully one that is worthwhile once all the track upgrades and maintenance are complete. Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!

-N&W475