I asked a few questins before I left for my trip so I thought I would post a small trip report for those that were following along…
I had a big mile stone the other day. My fiancee’s son and I, (who just turned 5 in March) took our first camping trip together and it was a rail fanning trip no less! It was just us “guys” for a overnight trip up the BNSF Trans Con Line between Flagstaff and Williams.
We got to the tracks around 1230 pm on Sunday and set up camp about 100 yards across a field so that we had a great veiw from the back of my truck. ( I have a small campershell on the back) From our vantage point, we could see one way about 300 yards, the other, almost a mile. We also had a grade crossing with a road that led to a small cabin community which proved lots and lots of horns and bells. On Sunday, we had snow, rain, blowing cold wind, some sun, cloudy. Just everything Mother Nature could come up with. We were able to take a small “hike” up to the ROW and waited but only got to see one tran go by. but it was good one as it was loaded with all kinds of cars includeing a dozen or so flat cars with large CAT construction equipemtn on it. graders, dumptruck, and bulldozers. That was a double bonus for the little guy.
After that, we gave up due to the weather being just nasty. We climbed back in the truck and watched a a movie (gotta love the those portable DVD players) and wathced the trains go by. We kept on goign until it was bed time, he crawled in the front and I slept in the back, and we fell asleep to the sound of desiels rumbling up the grades and horns in the distance.
Monday mornig we woke up and drove over to the grade crossing, parked just on the other side of the ROW and hung out to see a couple more before went home. All in all, not includeing bedtime (there was alot at night) we saw close to 30 trains in less than a day. Great, great trip and the kid had a ball. Not much more a Dad could[:D] ask for.
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