Milwaukee Road 261 (restored 4-8-4) made it's final run for at least a year yesterday and I was on the train. (Today it starts being worked on in a major shopping which will take at least one year.)
We went from Minneapolis down the "Milwaukee" (CP) side of the Mississippi River, crossing over to LaCrosse WI for a barbecue-picnic lunch at the depot, then came back up the "Burlington" (BNSF) side of the river thru western Wisconsin back to the cities. I took some video (no runbys this trip) but since I run Vista I can't as yet download the video onto a PC. Weather wasn't great, cloudy but dry until we started back, rained the rest of the way to Minneapolis.
Unfortunately I seem to be a jinx...on a trip one year ago (Sept 15) an older guy tripped over a firehouse while 261 and the visiting CP Hudson were being watered in LaCrosse. He hurt his head rather badly, and had to be taken to the hospital. This time not so dramatic, but a passenger fainted on the train on the way down and was taken off at I think Red Wing (we didn't learn about it til later in the day so I'm not sure which stop) and taken to the hospital.
Oddly enough, the previous time I rode that line along the Mississippi was taking Amtrak's Empire Builder from Chicago to Mpls/St.Paul about 5 years ago. On that trip, a passenger got drunk and disorderly and was booted off the train (and into the hands of the local sheriff's office) once we crossed over the river into Minnesota.
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
Well it was quite a nice trip really, at least it didn't rain on us during the picnic. The Amtrak depot in LaCrosse is partially occupied by a barbecue restaurant:
The Train Station BBQ
Come to think of it, the first time I was on these cars was when it was used on an excursion train across the old Erie Mining / LTV Steel line in northern MN, pulled by an Erie Mining F9, a Soo Line FP-7, with a newish DMIR diesel in between. On that trip, we had a stowaway who only got caught because he 'stole' a box lunch from behind the bar in the lounge car. (Since the lunch was part of the fare as I recall, he could have just asked for 'his' box lunch and they would have given it to him.) He got pulled off and arrested back at Hoyt Lakes.
The drunk on the Empire Builder was kinda fun in that I "called the shot". I told my girlfriend (now wife) a couple of times while we travelled across Wisconsin, he was going to be in trouble when we crossed the Mississippi. Minnesota has a law against public drunkeness in a train or other 'public conveyance' (like a streetcar or bus); and gives the conductor of a train the same power to arrest as a sheriff of the county the train is in. Sure enough, first stop over the river in MN he's hauled off. "Hey, what about my luggage??" "You can pick that up in St.Paul"...which was about 200 miles from where he was getting removed.
I seem to be a Flying Dutchman. Earlier, I convinced my hapless wife yet once again... to take a trip by rail to visit her family in Washington DC.Wouldnt this be fun? She was eight months pregnant. We took Amtrak which was then routed over the old PRR mainline..lots of jointed rail..alot of trackage that had seen better days...we were per usual ...running late by the schedule. In the wee hours of the morning, the coach began to violently rock. My wife was being rapidly swung back and forth on her berth like a limp sack of potatoes...I pulled open the shade and looked out the window....we were rocketing along at a incredible rate. She had turned a whiter shade of pale and made a straight bee line to the bathroom. In the morning, as we sat eating breakfast...or rather I was...she declined.and was not a happy camper....the jolly conductor took that as his cue to engage last night's engineer by cracking a series of jokes regarding his making up time.the other passengers looked upon this conversation in grim silence with furtive glances in his direction.. My wife glared at me silently while I weakly smiled...and wisely kept my mouth shut and drank my orange juice. The things our spouses put up with..it boggles my mind. The whole rail excursion history of our life together has become a running joke..always rightfully at my expense. Our family photo album has a certain progression..it begins with our dating..shes brightly smiling on this trip or that..then...theres the next ones of her reading mystery novels... keeping herself amused on yet another trip...then the latest ones show her sleeping next "sawing logs" to other excursionists...we have been married for twenty years...when I bring up the subject now...she has the female perogative of an ironclad memory...remember that trip to washington? Oh...yeah...yes, that was quite a trip...hee..hee..
I am now 2 for 2 in misty, rainy weather for 261 trips.
Hopefully, they will get the FRA required work done on a timely basis and it will be back in service in time for this trip's normal run during the fall colors season next year. If so I will be there and (hopefully) break my losing streak!
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