Well I had work to do up in Aguanga saturday morning and after that I decided to go do some railfanning. I met up with the tracks at Thousand Palms where there was a westbound manifest waiting for helpers. I hopped on the interstate and headed for Indio passing another westbound, doublestack with a NS unit in the lead entering Thousand Palms behind the manifest. Over in Indio I found a few consists in the yard for local work, all the units were the older 3 piece windshield SD60Ms. Further east between Indio and Cochella I came across a lone SD70ACe sitting on a spur (bad order setout?). Continueing east I encountered westbounds sitting in almost every sideing. Mecca, Mortmar and Ferrum all had stack trains. Each had a NS unit in there consists. I stopped and photographed all of the head ends. At Bertram there was an eastbound without power. Rogoza and Wister also had westbounds in the hole.
Out of the 8 trains I saw, the only one moveing was the one pulling into Thousand Palms. I was starting to think UP was gridlocked. But it turnes out I was running just ahead of a eastbound UPS heavy hotshot. At Niland there was a track crew working on the crossover and there were 2 trains in each direction waiting to get passed. As soon as the hotshot got through the others were let out. Actually there were 3 westbounds but one snuck past as I was navigateing town to the other end of the yard. I was going to go to El Centro then back home on I-8 but I changed my mind and decided to pace one of the westbounds back west.
Then I did something stupid. Hurrying to change rolls of film to catch the power on the last stacker (UP-2 leasers-SP) I popped the cover before the film had rewound all the way. I couldn’t hear it over the train. So that whole roll that I had shot up to that point is probably a total loss. I hate it when that happens.
As the two westbounds, a manifest followed by a stack, were pulling out on the main (quite close to eachother I might add) I shot up to the Border checkpoi