One Saturday afternoon on the way to Yosemite

[William Cowie]

Do you all remember MAD magazine? One of their features started that way smile.gif Anyway, we were driving along and suddenly we see this GP40 pulling just one reefer. It was bad lighting, bad angle, bad everything, but the overall scene was just too good to pass up. Here's this crew, just lollygagging down the line, long hood forward, lapping up the gorgeous sprng weather and the beautiful surroundings...

http://www.railimages.com/albums/album11/abt.sized.jpg

Somewhere down the road we had one single opportunity to catch the guy in better light, so we did. Whimsical, opportunistic railfanning at its, well best would be too flattering, wouldn't it? smile.gif

http://www.railimages.com/albums/album11/abu.jpg

[Alan]

Nice one William! Catching something like that, can be very rewarding. Pleased you managed to get the opportunity for the second shot smile.gif

[Colonel]

h'mmm not being an expert on locos although i'm getting better all the time, is that a SD45????

[JASON]

Paul,
GP40-2..... smile.gif

[Tompm]

Great shots!

[HemiAdda2d]

It would only be better if the Geep were unpatched!!!

[Martyn Read]

Cool catch!

[YoHo]

Is that a Dash 2? I don't see any of the telltales that I know.

[Flash Blackman]

William:

Great picture. Is that in Denver somewhere? Were you really on the way to Yosemite nat'l Park? Keep up those good pictures.

[Flash Blackman]

As to a -2? I can't really tell. I think the -2 has a water sight glass opening and anti-climbers. Unless a GP40 and a GP40-2 are next to each other, I am not sure. This one doesn't look like it has anti-climbers and the sight glass would be on the other side of the long hood. My 2 cents.

[William Cowie]

No Flash, it was on Hwy 120 between San Francisco and Yosemite.

By the way, I have another surprise for you I picked up on the way, but have not yet had the time to upload and post. smile.gif

As to what the loco is, I don't know either. Anticlimbers, though are not an accurate guide to use, because the only DRGW -2's that had anticlimbers (to my knowledge) were two late ones, #3129 and #3130. I did some research on this, because I need one for my new layout. And since Atlas decided not to do one, custom is the only way to go :( So I've accumulated a lot of pictures. There are a lot of the earlier -2's in the 3100 series floating around Denver (all unpatched, no less), all with no anticlimbers.

Here's a detailed study I did for the project (also passed it on to Atlas in case it may be of use to them).

http://community.webshots.com/album/122848986RBVgsc

#3121 and 3126 are confirmed -2 (according to a few sources).

[Colonel]

Gee how bad Am I lol I didnt even notice the trucks were two axle lol

[William Cowie]

Hey Paul, I kept the trucks in the shadows just to see if I could confuse you! ;) :D

[Tom Carter]

Oh cool, you caught the UP "Tidewater Job". %That trackage is near and dear to me, and looks like you were on 120 right around Escalon CA, between Manteca (where you left Highway 99) and Escalon (about 25 miles from me here in Stockton). This is part of the old Tidewater Southern RR to Modesto. Kinda sad though that the Tidewater is now reduced to a 1 car local, but glad you enjoyed the train. Kind of a neat operation. :D

[William Cowie]

Thanks for the info. About a mile before seeing the train, we saw a cut a reefers that had been spotted at an agricultural cold storage industry. In defense of the 1 car local, it WAS Saturday in springtime, hardly a peak period in the agricultural world...