Evening all! If anyone's going to the Trainfest this weekend...enjoy. I'm saving my "railfan" and "good husband" credits for a chase of the WSOR business train and upcoming deer season.
Meanwhile...I'll share a few pictures from the last few days.
Ballast Train O490 out of Virginia, MN rolls south in the first snow of the season. I wasn't sure what the second hose/wire was above the coupler but someone else commented that it was an electronic connection for opening the bottom doors. I wasn't ready for this guy and had to settle for a little bit of a grab shot. I like it though.
A short while later, M346 puts in an appearance. This time I can get the power in the heavy, wet flakes.
L534 (Green Bay to Neenah turn) runs for home with two GP40s (one GP40R and one GP40-2LW) on the head end.
Hoping to catch one of two southbounds coming towards Neenah I headed a bit north in Neenah...only to get 'hosed' by L534 going north. They block my shot of Q116.
Shortly after those two clear...A416 comes to town with a repainted BCOL Dash 9 leading.
A416 is now ready to reverse directions (it's a push-pull operation) and head home to Green Bay.
Finally, A491 heads north after cooling its heels in the Dixie Siding just south of Neenah.
If anyone wants to see more info...the pictures should be clickable but here's a link to my photostream on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danbraun/with/6335225973/ So yesterday...3 (4 if you count both ways on A416) trains in about 45 minutes. Sorry Jim!
Dan
NYS&W caused a little excitement in Syracuse tonight - they dumped the last two cars of a southbound train right alongside Interstate 81 in the city.
Worse, one car is a propane tanker. Reportedly full.
The derailment occured just far enough south of Syracuse University as to not affect the football game there. Traffic was (and still is) a mess, but the game went on as scheduled.
I-81 is closed through much of the city, and around 60 homes have been evacuated. They let the occupants of a nearby cemetary stay, though...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Only because they couldn't wake 'em up!
Now we'll get the big hue and cry about what could have happened, and why those "rolling bombs" shouldn't be routed through big cities, and on and on...
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Greetings, by the way, from Wisconsin. We'll try to show up on time at Trainfest this noon, and may have more to write this evening, from back home, after we've been there.
Maybe I can get a couple of copies of Trains4Kids autographed by the editor...
Carl / Pat...check your email when you get home. More pic's for you.
Quentin
Hi, Carl, I was in Desoto (Missouri) yesterday and saw a bunch of freshly shopped covered hoppers. They had CNW reporting marks in the 490000 series. What would UP be using them for? I saw well weathered covered hoppers with SP and MP reporting marks, too.
James
Holy Hannah, man alive!!! Lessons learned recently via an incident:
1. Some 911 dispatchers do NOT know what a railroad is. (Really!)
2. If possible, carry your local RR emergency #s with you or in your phone; don't rely on them being READILY VISIBLE at the crossing. They may be posted but...
3. Even 'emergency' numbers can go to voice mail. I kept dialing back and got someone.
Not too fun of a day, RR-wise but hopefully, it all worked out OK in the end.
Nance-CCABW/LEI
“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” --Will Rogers
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right! --unknown
James, the CNW 490000-series cars were built for malt service; Anheuser-Busch was the biggest customer for that. I suspect that with them moving away from railroads (and the Manufacturers Railway in particular), a lot of these cars are no longer needed for malt service, and may be having their gravity-pneumatic outlets removed. Mind you, this is just speculation at this point. As of now, UMLER is not showing any such change. These cars are about 17 years old; 967 of the original 1000 cars are still shown in service.
Quentin, no fresh e-mails since this morning for some reason.
Trainfest was quite the show, comparable in size to some of the quilt conventions I've attended with Pat (such as the one that took us to Cincinnati this past spring). Got to meet and greet two fellow Forum members, Dave Nelson and Keith Schmidt, and had a nice talk with Angela, who did provide an autograph for me.
Per tradition, the group photo should be coming soon to a Forum near you. I'm holding the sign; Pat took the picture.
I replied on email Carl...
I neglected to mention that this morning, before Trainfest, we spent about 40 minutes listening to "Wait-Wait Don't Tell Me" while sitting at Duplainville. The CN was cooperative, sending a stack train north followed almost immediately by a manifest train southbound (I'm not familiar with the line; there must be a siding right north of Duplainville, since the crossing has one CN track crossing two CP tracks). The manifest was very interesting...a string of CN ballast cars behind the engine, then blocks in the mixture for potash and molten sulfur. There was a DPU pair midtrain.
Carl,
The stack train was probably Q199 and the manifest was most likely B786 based on what you're describing. According to my notes...CN has one long "siding" north of Duplainville. It's 13,071' long and I think is called "Quad". Just south of the diamond is the smaller "Waukesha" at 8,617' long.
That manifest would have been the one in the long siding; it came out slowly and picked up speed when it was all on the main line.
I saw a CN unit today on an eastbound UP manifest. It was one of five trains seen in about 35 minutes this morning. Two were scoots; two eastbound manifests, and one an eastbound stack train. (UP doesn't run anything through to CN yet, as far as I know.)
This afternoon, we had occasion to be trackside again for about an hour; it was westbound's turn: besides two scoots we had a westbound stacker (routed up Track 3 after the eastbound scoot had cleared him at Elmhurst), and an auto train.
Saw on a hopper today:
"can you be lost if you have nowhere to go?"
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
If you have nowhere to go you truly must be lost.
A gondola has on it:
"I got up at 7am for this?"
I can sympathize with that one.
zugmann Saw on a hopper today: "can you be lost if you have nowhere to go?" ... A gondola has on it: "I got up at 7am for this?"
...
At last! Something on the side of railroad cars worth reading (besides the reporting marks...)
A little humor for the folks waiting at the gates!
All who wander are not lost. I saw this on a " side door pullman" car in 1999.~~~~ Food for thought.
Jim
Y6bs evergreen in my mind
My daughter's two favorite statements while in the car when she was little:
"We're going this way!"
"We're right here!"
(They may have sounded like stating the obvious, but both of them, when she used them, were her way of saying that she knew where she was, or the route that we were traveling. This daughter, when she grew up, became the best travel companion one could ask for. I'm looking forward to next week, when she and her husband come in from California.)
Our thoughts today are with Trains Associate Editor Angela Pusztai-Pasternak and her family. Her husband Joe is having GI surgery today (maybe that means an army of skilled people will be working on him! ).
Update, this evening: the surgery has apparently gone well.
Here's hoping Angela's husband recovers well.
I took another trip south...to Horicon(ish). Here's some shots and descriptions below. As always, C & C are welcome.
I decided to take a trip to the Horicon area as the WSOR was supposed to be running their business train. As I now know...that didn't happen. So I decided to make the best of my trip by checking out what presented itself.
In Horicon the WSOR's L595 (former HK) was getting its train ready to depart. Ironically I (from Oshkosh) drove to Horicon and caught the Oshkosh train.
Here they are as seen from Clinton Street.http://flic.kr/p/aFhxaF
As they pulled out of the yard I moved east and caught them near my original intended target.http://flic.kr/p/aFmmg5
Hearing some radio traffic on UP's mainline frequency I headed to Clyman to see what I could find. For now, the only thing here was the LPA-18 getting ready to work the industries at Clyman Junction. They came in light power.http://flic.kr/p/aFmmtQ
After the UP WI dispatcher told the local they had plenty of time on the mainline I headed towards Reeseville on the CP. I wasn't there long and 298 came in with a pair of GEVOs. Call me nuts...but I like them.http://flic.kr/p/aFmmQ3
Shortly after they cleared some MoW activity I heard 282 coming as they announced "SOO 6035 East". I decided to wait and wasn't disappointed.http://flic.kr/p/aFmn8j
After they cleared the MoW, CP's dispatcher told the foreman that he had plenty of time to work with nothing close for a while. I headed back towards Clyman as UP radio traffic was picking back up. It sounded like a meet was shaping up at ROCK and I hoped to catch the participants before and after the meet, respectively.
First came a sand train, UP 7229 East. http://flic.kr/p/aFhyot
Shortly thereafter was coal loads bound for Weston, UP 7265 West.http://flic.kr/p/aFmnDu
After a short break in the action and just before I headed for home NS 8868 East came calling, just south of Beaver Dam.http://flic.kr/p/aFhyXV
So all in all it wasn't a bad day after all.
Wish I could have been up there to sip some of that lemonade you made, Dan! Great pictures! It looks like the UP main line is shaping up in that area.
My highlight of the day was a unit train of Case and Holland combines headed east with an NS ex-Con in the consist. It crossed over at the control point, on a red-over-flashing-yellow (first time I've seen that aspect!).
Carl, have you seen any of the specials handling Kawasaki M-8 motorized passenger cars? They've been running them the past few days. I haven't seen one, but on the line ups they're showing them with one engine and four cars.
Jeff
Carl, Yyu might also see some Amtrak action today on the UP. No 6 is detouring (crew on duty out west) and No 5 is on the line up. Seems to be a one day thing.
I wondered if there would be detours, Jeff. BNSF had a trestle fire at Thayer, Iowa, that damaged the ties on the bridge. It might be warm enough here today to go have a look.
One more that I remember on a hopper:
"You can not be totally free until you've lost it all"
It may not be exactly worded like that, but the meaning was the same. Another thread reminded me of a story our one engineer told me: a friend of this engineer said to them "I saw this train last night at this crossing, and it kept going back and forth like it didn't know where it was going! I think the engineer was drunk!"
To which the engineer had to explain that there was an industry right next to the crossing and that they were switching the cars out. I guess people never realize that the cars from those 150 car trains actually have to go somewhere.
But only 1 car at a time ?
Your last saying on the hopper car reminds me of song lyrics of some kind - like Joni Mitchell*, perhaps ? - but I can't do any better than that right now.
"You don't know what you've got til it's gone", from her [Paved Paradise to Put Up a ] Parking Lot song. But there are still other similar ones . . .
- Paul North.
Thanks Carl. The Adams Sub (between Butler Yard and Adams, WI) is one that's baffled me for a while...finally got a chance to start to figure things out. Give me a few more weekends on there and I'll have times, etc down pretty well.
Paul & Zug - I've seen similar sayings but in chalk on some different WC Boxes and other more "local" rolling stock. I have deduced that it's likely a RR or industry employee doing the writing because the cars in question "only" sit still at the industry and the local yard. That and the notes are in chalk which I've seen several kinds of yardworkers use to mark couplers, shanks, wheels, etc with.
Jim - I did it again today. Driving in to work I caught M342, A446 and Q199 in about 30 minutes. Then, after work just caught M391 and A491. Total time "trackside" was about 45 minutes (total) for 5 trains. It sounded like about 4 went past in the four hours I was at work today.
http://www.stb.dot.gov/newsrels.nsf/WEBUNID/67B0EC7439DD13AF8525794C005BEC45?OpenDocument
Move over Shelocta, PA ...Looks like R J Corman is looking at seriously going ahead with building 20 miles on new railroad, Wallaceton-Goreton, PA for a waste to energy plant, reviving a long dead railroad line and connecting to another line that they want to pull out of railbanked status. Might be fun to watch
.
ex-NYC Beech Creek line?
MC, I saw something yesterday about the Michigan high-speed corridor being opened for engineering bids, with letters of interest due by sometime next month. Not sure what all is entailed there, or what has already been designed.
______________
High winds today, with temperatures near 50 (after barely breaking 30 yesterday). Still, I was out there on my bike, From Facebook:
Lombard was visited by Amtrak's California Zephyr today (just passing through). Its regular route was blocked by a trestle fire in Iowa. The westbound train passed me on Track 1, about ten minutes after the eastbound scoot had gone by on the same track. Up until the new crossovers, it had been on track 2 (where it possibly passed the westbound scoot around Elmhurst). I'm not sure why they needed to cross it over here, as the signals suggested that there was nothing on the line between here and West Chicago.The eastbound will go through here later this evening, probably around D&D time (dark and dinner). Things should be back to normal tomorrow, when the trestle is expected to be repaired.
Does anyone know of a wreck that Amtrak P42 58 was in lately? Lots of paint missing ahead of the cab on the right side, top to bottom.
CShaveRR [snipped] Does anyone know of a wreck that Amtrak P42 58 was in lately? Lots of paint missing ahead of the cab on the right side, top to bottom.
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