Did anybody have any good luck railfanning or doing other railroad-related hobby pursuits over the Thanksgiving holiday?
I didn’t do any railfanning as such because I was overcoming a cold, but I did feel well enough to hit an antique mall in Hinckley, MN just east of I-35. There I managed to unearth a pair of Union Pacific blue & gold scheme salad plates under a stack of non-RR china, for a mere $12 each (I snagged the one in the best condition, which I’d say is “excellent” condition). I’m not a UP fan, but I find their china patterns exquisite.
I did see a southbound BNSF mixed freight on Friday evening with 5 units, one a SOO 6-axle locomotive on the Hinckley Sub.
Quite the opposite here, luck-wise. I normally don’t have much time for railfanning on a holiday weekend such as this, but I still get opportunities to catch glimpses of train activity on the UP transcon (at least 50% of the time) and other local lines as I travel around town. This weekend, however, in spite of a good dozen or so of such opportunities, I came up with zilch.
Well I did get to railfan on Monday near Waupaca, WI (an area I’ve wanted to check out for a while) while taking a break from a different kind of hunting. Railfanning was much mor productive as I was able to roster 14 locos I hadn’t seen previously and got some nice shots of trains.
Not spectacular, but not bad, either. Of course, what other people consider to be “weekends” and “holidays” are often work days for me, so in that regard I kept very busy on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Plenty of trains (and I mentioned Saturday’s variety of power on another thread here somewhere).
Friday, Pat and I went out to Elmhurst briefly, meeting up with Colin (Metra Kid 2) and his friends and “anti-foamer” brother (sho still seemed to be enjoying himself). We didn’t stay long, but had a couple of westbounds in quick succession. Based on the holiday schedule for Friday, westbound manufests from Proviso shouldn’t have been expected. Our trains were a DPU-equipped ComEd empty train and a stack train from Global 2, with two DPUs.
I missed the two perishable trains this week (not unusual), but they might have been easy to catch on CSX–they were only about five hours apart this week, and we’d gotten rid of both of them by mid-morning Sunday.
Sunday after work, we went to dinner at Two Brothers from Italy in Elmhurst (a lot of folks on the Forum know this place!), and were treated to a manifest freight in each direction, as well as one scoot (the other scoot was late, thanks to one of those freights).
well 3 cp units on an ethenol train. a ballast train with side dump cars of csx predecessor roads.Plus q 351 made it out of willard.we also made new friends in deshler and findlay.saturday wasn’t bad at at.
Well, I railfanned my way from Needles to Fresno on wed. It was rainy most of the way [:(] but still I saw lots of trains. Then after thanksgiving my dad and I did some railfanning around Mojave. Then we found out the shuttle was landing at Edwards, so we watched the shuttle land while catching a couple BNSF trains.
Although all day Friday was bright sunshine here in northern Illinois, I managed to waste the day at home.
I had to take my daughter to work at 5 pm, but had the scanner on before that to hear the IC&E (OK, yeah, it’s the CP) squawk out a meet at Adeline, IL. Followed the westbound over from Davis Junction (three blue and yellow SD40-2s) and set up for a night shot of the IC&E 6402 East sitting under a star-filled sky at Adeline. I added some fill-flash and thought it turned out rather nice.
On Thanksgiving Day, I was on the UPs triple main. Didn’t really notice much slowdown, except for a few less freights, but I still managed a train once every 7-8 minutes with a lot of meets and just missed a triple meet. Scooted up Hwy 83 and stopped for an hour on the BNSF coal line and caught 3 (2 loads, 1 empty) there. From there, went to Bismark ND and caught a few more BNSF trains. Few more trains on the way back on Friday along I-94
Didn’t see a single moving train, although I wasn’t in one place that had trains long enough to wait, either.
No trains on the big bridges at Harrisburg - a disappointment. Did see an interesting car in one of the yards there - appeared to be a flatcar with some sort of screening on the sides, almost like a gondola. Painted yellow. No idea.
An Amtrak eastbound was at the Syracuse station when I crossed the tracks there. Heard it leave a couple of minutes later.
Well, I saw my first moving train in over a month… Just a Guilford GP40 shuffling around in the East Deerfield yard, but to a train-deprived railfan, even that’s pretty good![8D]
The closest thing I had to be able to see anything was stopping by the North Carolina Transportation Museum on the way home from Greenville, SC (saw a 6 locomotives parked near the Amtrak station there and a train stopped at a little yard over I-85 in Gastonia, NC). They had the FP7A SOU 6133 out running so that was pretty cool to see even on a lousy, cold rainy day. Also stoppde by the gift shop with my wife and got out pretty cheaply.
Also saw a pretty cool site - a CSX train on the A line running through rain and fog at night - that was quite cool with the locomotive lights suddenly appearing - it was headed south, I was headed north and I don’t have the equipment or skill to do justice (or desire to sit out in the cold fog and rain) to capture such a view on film.
Typically Amtrak runs extra sections of its trains on the Northeast Corridor over the Thanksgiving holiday using cars and locomotives borrowed from MARC, SEPTA, and NJ Transit; the travel seems to be the heaviest on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.I used to go out to try to photograph these extra trains since they used to be operated with the borrowed equipment, but over the past few years very few of the extra trains used the equipment borrowed from the commuter authorities.
Where is that? I’ve styed in Hickly 3 or 4 times on the way to the North Shore, and don’t recall seeing that. I would have sworn, that I’ve walked that whole area east of I-35. Have you been in Hinkley proper, when a coal train comes through? Those things just scream through town. It’s amazing to watch.
On Thanksgiving, I walked downtown to the BNSF yard in Aberdeen, S.D., while we were visiting Grandma. There is always yard switching going on there. I was amazed how far they could kick a car on flat track. A couple of Ferromex ES44ac’s sat in the yard. ([^]). Where we stayed had hot water heat, meaning we had to sleep with the windows open to keep from roasting. I could hear the yard crew switching all night, and a train come through town every 2 or 3 hours.
Heading north on I-35, you take the Hwy. 48 exit heading east. Then you turn right on CR-134 just past the gas station (very next right I believe after the exit). The antique mall is south of the hotel at the far end of that big parking lot, just south of Lady Luck Dr.
Yep - I’ve been in Hinckley to see BNSF freights blow-through, very impressive. In fact the great guys at the St. Croix Valley RR let me ride along on their daily freight between Hinckley and Rush City on the old NP a few years ago. That was truly a thrill (we switched the flour mill at Rush City, setting-out and picking-up covered hoppers).
My luck finally changed tonight- had to run down to the southwest side of town near Beverly Yard to pick up some Christmas stuff from JCPenney. On the way back, I took US30 to I-380, and was rewarded with lots of action. Saw two switch jobs moving cars around at ADM, and then as I crossed the UP transcon on the I-380 overpass, I was treated to two westbounds- a slow-moving manifest on Track 2 (left-hand), approaching a solid yellow signal beyond 6th Street, being blown away by a high-balling stacker on Track 1. Now, if I could only get some time to sit and watch without keeping one eye on the road ahead of me…[sigh]