Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Hey everyone. I just uploaded a video about some trains I got in mid-May on the 3B South. I discuss some of the CTC upgrades being made to the line. This is just for the first CTC portion of the 3B South at the time this footage was recorded. More work has been done and there is still more work to go for NS to upgrade the entire line, which was originally dark territory, to full CTC signaled territory. NS 8102, the Pennsylvania Heritage Unit, also makes an appearance in this video.

With all that being said, this will be the last video I produce on YouTube for the foreseeable future. The channel will be dormant from this point forward (unless I decide to begin uploading again in the future), and I have no intention of removing any content from this channel as of now.

I want to express my sincere thanks for everyone that has subscribed to my channel and interacted with my content. I'm glad there are individuals out there that have gotten enjoyment out of what I do for fun, and it has been a genuine pleasure getting to know you. Till next time.

Link: https://youtu.be/y96uvyNxWn4

6 months ago | [YT] | 43

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Good afternoon everyone. I meant to release this about a month ago, but here is the new long format video of my top 10 coolest catches from the past 10 years. There's a lot of good stuff in this video, some of which is relatively current, and some that you won't see on the railroad today. I've attached the link below. Enjoy the video!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/3HJp_t7a9cE

6 months ago | [YT] | 15

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Hey folks. I'm still working on my next long format video but I wanted to take a moment to point you guys to a friend of mine who went with me to Illinois. ‪@trainguycalebrator‬ just released part 1 of 4 of his footage from the trip and I encourage you to watch his video and subscribe to his channel as well. Caleb is a good friend of mine and you will enjoy the next 3 videos from this trip that he has lined up. I will link his video below.

Caleb's Video (Part 1): https://youtu.be/iTb3I4BlY6M?si=2K75O...

7 months ago | [YT] | 11

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Happy 4th of July!

The attached image is of UP M-PRNL in Ina, IL at golden hour on 3/8/25 with two engines each wearing the American Flag.

Flickr: flic.kr/p/2reNRNc

7 months ago | [YT] | 107

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

The attached Facebook link contains the remainder of my photos from my Illinois trip back in March. More info on each image is in the Facebook link, but I have included a few of the highlights in this post. Enjoy!

Facebook Link: www.facebook.com/share/p/1C4e88FYZD/

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7 months ago | [YT] | 45

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Here is the remainder of my Illinois footage. I will upload more images from this trip at a later date.

Link: https://youtu.be/RdVUyEmpqH8

7 months ago | [YT] | 12

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Hey folks. I have some pretty bad news. This will be a long explanation, but I want to be up front with you guys about what's going on, and a post is the most concise way I know how to do it.

To begin, I have 2 drives on my computer, my main drive (C:), and a drive I used for storage of train photos and videos (D:). My C: drive was continuously getting full and was always a problem when it came to editing images. I decided to upgrade my C: drive to a new 2 TB drive this past weekend. I made perfectly clear that I wanted my C: drive imaged to the new 2 TB drive. I got a call Monday afternoon that they imaged the wrong drive (my D: drive) and that they had to recover a bunch of stuff.

Essentially, the folks that worked on my computer recovered everything except for my model train files (ESU files) and my footage from the start of this year to 3/12/25, which was the end of my Illinois trip. So the bulk of the footage from that trip is gone, and I'm pretty confident there is no way to recover that footage. It is awful and it hurts because I had really good footage from that trip, enough to make 2 more parts following the part 1 that I released not long ago.

A lot of it is lost, but not all of it. Since Lightroom was located on my C: drive, all of my edited photos still exist, but I have to export them all over again. If I want to get my model train files back, I will need to download what I have from my engines currently so I can start all over again with that. I do have some footage of trains going away from the camera from my Illinois trip. They are really some of the best trains of the trip from parts 2 and 3, but it is all footage of them going away. In other words, this next video from the Illinois trip will be all I have left. It will, unfortunately, be nowhere near as good as part 1. It will basically be a glorified slide show with about 10 clips of video footage.

After that, I will plan on making a special video marking 10 years of uploading videos to YouTube on this channel some time around July 4th if all goes well. That video will look back on the past 10 years and will showcase what I think are the top 10 coolest moments of my railfanning career. I will make another video after that featuring some of the CTC upgrades that have been taking place on the NS 3B South as of late. That will be the last video I upload to YouTube for a while, and it may even be the end of me sharing content on the internet altogether. I haven't come to a conclusion on that last part yet, but that's where I am leaning.

I know this is a really big let down for some, and for that I do apologize. I will say that I was originally planning to step back from YouTube depending on how well the 3 videos that I had planned for Illinois went. The first one didn't go nearly as well as I had hoped, and this incident with my files has pushed me over the edge. There have been many times where I have felt that my efforts to make my videos as close to perfect as I possibly can do not produce a good return on investment. Using the previous Illinois video as an example, as of writing this post, I have a little over 1300 subscribers, but the video currently has about 230 views. To sum this paragraph up, I work way too hard for what I do (for free by the way) to get the results I do.

That leads me to my next motivator for giving this up. Monetization. I'm reluctant to talk about this because I am afraid it will make me look greedy, but I want to give you guys an idea of what is going on in my head. It has always been a dream of mine to make money off of what I love doing the most, and I will say this year and some of last year has made me realize that it was realistic. In fact, earlier this year was the closest to monetization I have ever been. YouTube's rules to achieve monetization are to have over 1000 subscribers (which I am grateful for by the way) and to either a) have over 3000 watch hours for the past 365 days to essentially have people leave tips on your videos (YouTube has a different name for it but that's essentially what it is) or b) have over 4000 watch hours for the past 365 days to make money off of ad revenue. Right now, I am sitting below 2,000 watch hours in the past 365 days. That number will continue to change as long as time marches on, and will plummet around the start of 2026 since I had a lot of videos perform really well around that time. The algorithm hasn't been favoring me much, so monetization is beginning to look less realistic by the day.

So if you've been watching my videos and have, for some reason, been blasted with ads, just know that I didn't make a single cent off of that, and that the video you were watching was brought to you purely by my own efforts which look like research, organizing my footage, typing a script, narrating my script to the painstaking point of making sure that I don't hear my own saliva clicking in the narration (there are very few things more frustrating that that because I know you guys don't want to hear that in a video), doing actual edits of the videos, and, finally, releasing it on YouTube and hoping something doesn't go wrong on their end.

With all of that being said, its been a really rough week. This was a post that I really didn't enjoy typing out, but I felt that you guys needed to know what was happening. This is not how I envisioned stepping back from YouTube, so I ask that you bear with me in this. I don't want the last video I produce for this channel to end on a low note.

To conclude, I just want to say thank you all for watching and interacting with my content. I never thought I would have over 1000 subscribers on my channel, or ever be at this point all those years ago when I got the idea of filming trains with my smartphone, and I am sincerely thankful. If it wasn't for this channel, or for YouTube in general, I would have never gotten into railfanning and would have missed out on meeting a ton of great folks.

I hope you all continue to enjoy the content that is currently on the channel right now, since I have no plans to delete any of it. It has been my honor to share my journey in this hobby with you, and you have my sincere thanks for interacting with my content.

Have a good one.

8 months ago | [YT] | 21

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Happy Friday everyone. It's been a long time since I have done a model train livestream. Honestly, I have acquired so much stuff since the last model train livestream that it would take 2-3 livestreams just to get caught up on that. I'm already behind on railfanning content, so hopefully, this post will do just fine. I have been busy working on model trains along with railfanning content (namely part 2 of the Illinois railfanning trip (check out part 1 if you havent already)), so here is a description of each image. Odds are I will hold another model train livestream in the future to try and capture as many of my acquisitions as I can.

Image 1: I acquired Athearn Genesis SD90MAC-H UP 8507 a couple of months ago from TrainWorld at a pretty good price for a non-DCC model of this caliber. I installed ESU LokSound and 2 sugar cube speakers in this engine a few weeks ago. It looks great with Broadway Limited Imports AC6000CW UP 7509. I intend to swap the current decoder in the 7509 to a similar configuration as the UP 8507 (ESU LokSound and sugar cube speakers) in the future at some point.

Image 2: Athearn Genesis SD70ACU NS 7281 was acquired several months back, and I gave this engine the same ESU LokSound and speaker treatment as UP 8507. This is another good addition to my slowly growing NS fleet.

Image 3: Athearn Genesis GP38-2 GTW 5856 (a 2024 Christmas present)was given the ESU LokSound and speaker treatment as well and runs great. This install was tricker than the others because I had to CAD up a piece for the speaker to sit on above the rear truck. A friend printed the part for me. IC 2725 was acquired from Scale Trains' Discount Depot. I only noticed one defect on the engine, but apparently, there was a lot more wrong with the shell in the eyes of Scale Trains than I noticed.

Image 4: Both Athearn Genesis SD60Ms (BN 9242 on the left and CP 6262 on the right) have been upgraded to ESU LokSound and sugar cube speakers.

Image 5: Having just arrived in the mail a few minutes ago, I'm very happy to have 2 brand new Scale Trains AC44C6Ms NS 4000 and NS 4002 on my roster. Both engines look fantastic. I haven't powered them on yet, but as you can see, I have a ton of speed matching in my future.

Hope you enjoyed the post, and have a good weekend!

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8 months ago | [YT] | 29

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

In case you missed it, here is a link to Part 1 of the Illinois Trip. This video contains the trains my friends and I caught from March 8 - 9, 2025 with mostly CN and UP action as well as some NS action. The video is also my first 4K video I have uploaded to YouTube. I hope you enjoy the video!

The cover photo is one of the many good trains from our outing on the CN. CN 8952, Canadian National's Grand Trunk Western Heritage Unit, leads CN 8950 as they blast through the North end of Tonti Siding leading CN M39671.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/VRMrvV4KZRk

Flickr: flic.kr/p/2r81fZL

8 months ago | [YT] | 52

Slater Dozier Railroad Media

Hey everyone. Part 1 of the Illinois Trip will release today (5/30/25) at 6 PM CT. Stay tuned because this will be a really good video!

Attached image is of Illinois Central Death Star SD70s 1027 and 1015 leading CN L54491 South through Richview, IL on 3/8/25.

Flickr: flic.kr/p/2r7YNN8

8 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 55