Spent the weekend here partly for a 'Dockdog show' and partly to try for a few trains. Got a couple, hope to get more tomorrow.... This is a quick walkaround of the NP 2164,
And a couple of a coal train. It heads in over the Heart River bridge, then pulls up the Main and stops for a crew change and service. I was able to stand on the 10th Ave SW bridge and get some neat overhead shots. And notice how much coal is left in the empty..
Interesting seeing that coal in an "empty" car. Must be because of winter, and frozen in place. The consignee sure got shorted on their shipment!
That BN caboose looks to have had something tall hit the cupola end. The rest of the carbody is undamaged. Low bridge?? The museum has a lot of great paper/images of the area's railroads too; a great find!
It almost looks as though built that way. If actually a collision, that was a near perfectly shaped impact. What depot is that in Alan's photos?
The Steele depot is from the town of that name east of Bismark. Don't know if it is NP or SOO. They have a page on fb, but I don't do that.
I can't imagine how any collision could have caused this kind of damage without a) messing up the paint, b) taking out any windows c) touching those grab rails on top of the caboose. Unless all of that happened, was repaired, repainted but without repairing the body damage. If they were just using it as a shoving platform, that would make sense.
I spent some time looking at that cupola due to the unusual shape. My first thought was "Ouch! What hit that?" It appears to be deliberate and a design feature by the way the structure is formed. The window moldings are nicely sealed and appear to be unstressed, which would not be the case had it been collision damage. Anyway, that's my thought.
Definitely looks like a load shifted and hit the cupola, like a big I-beam. You can see the two vertical rust streaks where the paint was damaged on impact, just on the inside of the windows. Instant retirement for this old hack.
There is a picture on RRPictureArchives from what is listed as Seattle WA in 1992 and it did not have that indention in the cupola at that time http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1362491
It surely does make you wonder what the story is. If I get there this summer, I will definitely ask them if they know. Hopefully it will be a neat story!
Here's a few more pics from the east end on Monday morning as we headed home, The Heart River bridge, The 742 was still here after being swapped around, Shades of the BN... And looking east from the bridge, which is on the west end,
