The Flickr Csxq145 Image Generatr

In addition to western run-through power getting much more uncommon on the New Orleans to Atlanta CSX corridor in recent years, what was once 4 daily stack trains dwindled and then disappeared entirely in 2017. On a spring morning back in 2010, a well-powered Q145 has a new crew on board and starts across North Court street on their way out of Montgomery. Stack traffic has started to come back to the old Western Railway of Alabama in recent months though, as the CSX/CPKC purchase of the Meridian & Bigbee has opened up a new interchange route for Mexico stacks bound for Atlanta.

Q145 rolls south at a good clip, quickly leaving Hogansville behind.

After seeing a couple of northbounds by, Q145 pulls out of the siding at Moreland and continues its journey south to New Orleans. Just 10 years ago we still had 4 daily stack trains on the West Point Route (144, 145, 192, 193); but rerouting and train consolidation had reduced 145 to the last one by 2015. But now 145 has been abolished in all the silliness since the Harrison regime took power at CSX, with these containers now tacked onto Q615.

Not something you see everyday in 2015: a SD50 (and old-school standard cab Dash 8 for good measure) leading a hotshot stack train. Also of note is that in recent years it has been very rare to catch Q145 in daylight on the West Point Route; given it's usual late-PM departure from Fairburn.

With a new crew on board for the trip down to Mobile on the old L&N, Q145 scoots out of Alabama's capitol city following the Alabama River.

After a lengthy wait at Georgiana for MofW to clear and Q612 to get by, 145 swings around a super-elevated curve on the way into Evergreen.

Stacks and juice head for New Orleans behind a new (at the time) UP ACe.

The southbound Atlanta-Los Angeles stack train passes the big field that had just been cleared by the folks at Collins Farm back in February of 2011. Now in 2015 the ROW is starting to get seriously grown up again.

Q145 is now our only regular stack train on the west point, but back in 2011 the northbound counterpart was still around too. For a few weeks in February 2011 Q145 regulatory ran in the daylight; a nice change for a job that has routinely been nocturnal for many years.

Southbound under the then-new bridge in Notasulga with a cut of Tropicana Juice reefers from Florida up front.