After a long wonderful ride behind 261 on Friday, Saturday morning came all too quickly. It was time for phase II of our great steam adventure, chasing the double header of 261 and Canadian Pacific 2816. This train was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than we had left on Friday.
I figured that there would be hundreds of people with the same idea of chasing this rare event, and opted to skip driving into the caos of the departure from St Paul. Instead Big Girl (her name is Tammy) and I set off for Hastings, just over the Mississippi River from where the CP/ BNSF joint trackage ends, and the CP continues to follow the river south on the Minnesota side.
When we got there, there were already a bunch of people milling around cameras and radios in hand. I picked out a spot away from most of the people who were camped out near the lift bridge, and waited. More people showed up, and I was no longer alone, the train was late, and we had some nice conversations while we waited.
On the radio, we heard that it was finally on it’s way. Suddenly there was a whole new crowd of people, and a number of them decided to take up residence in the space in front of me. Somewhat frustrated and disgusted, I walked farther up the track.
By now I could hear the train coming, it was just on the other side of the river. The radio crackled, and the train had to stop as the bridge was raised for river traffic. I laughed, but now I was almost alone, just one other guy was even close to me. Here is the first shot of what I had been waiting for almost 2 hours that morning to see.
Here’s the second. Dang, clipped the corner of the cow catcher off, but otherwise not bad.
Now the chase was on, we moved with purpose, but didn’t ru***o get on the road. I figured we would just skip ahead and miss much of the craziness on the roa