Had to go to school in Billings for the entirety of last week. Saw these guys sitting ar Forsyth, Lots of grain and it looks like a GE railroad! And this was waiting for a go signal at Pompey's Pillar at sunset on my way home, twas great lighting!
New Zealand DJ class locomotive built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Dunedin, New Zealand. March, 2015.
An NS local returns to camp, crossing CSX in Columbia, SC. NS 3012 is a GP-40-2 built for CR in May 1977.
After getting about a foot of snow earlier this week, when the skies cleared and sun shine broke thru, I was trackside. Here's an eastbound grain empty rolling downgrade into Minot at MP 2.9.
No tower. This crossing came to exist in the late 1980s as projects were completed that greatly changed Columbia's rail landscape. The SAL used to cross through downtown Columbia on a long steel viaduct and high fill, and this was dismantled in favor of a deep ditch that carried the former SAL, CN&L and SOU lines under city streets and simplified rail operations. I took these two photos of the SAL viaduct in January 1991 shortly before it was removed.
Hardcoaler, that's a neat trestle! Kinda reminds me of the low, wooden trestle in Tacoma, WA from the old Milwaukee Road.
The SOU beat the SAL into Columbia by more than a half-century and I've always guessed that the SOU did its best to prevent the SAL from attaining an easy route through town, so the SAL was forced to erect an expensive trestle and fill to cross over the SOU. I wish I could have taken photos of CSX trains atop the trestle, but I visited the area too late. I did manage to capture a photo of a short CSX business train close by the trestle, but my film was fogged over, probably ruined by airport x-ray equipment. Fortunately both the SAL and SOU stations in Columbia survive as successful restaurants ... and NS has since buried the hatchet.
