Must be a new fad...shining flashlights into the camera ! Again tonight...a guy steps off the train and BAM...flashlight into the lens !! Wait....I got it...the higher elevation starves their brains of oxygen and makes em do dumb things...LOL.
So...I am guessing this was quite a catch in Flagstaff 02.25.20 @ about 22:08 George M. Pullman 32009 !
So I wake up...drinking a cup of coffee...turn on the railfan cameras. First Flagstaff. I notice the trains are not going their normal speed. Much slower past the station. It took a few trains going through before I realized that the crossing gate at Beaver St. was working but all the flashing lights at that intersection werent. Backed the video up 24 hours and it looks like its been that way for awhile. Next Belen. Love watching all the trains moving through that yard. Never boring. This morning while sliding through the video something caught my eye. Moved the slider back and forth to the point of interest. One of the guys on a quad had laid a string of blue flashing lights across one of the yard tracks.I have no idea what that was about. Maybe one of you guys knows and can enlighten me. TIA.
Same as the blue "Men at Work" signs they hang on locos, nothing will move on that rail until the person that put them there removes them. Probably going to maintenance on those tracks.
Update on the Belen NM railcam. According to the moderators, "BNSF does not want us to zoom the fuel pad area. trying an experiment , removing the camera limits while still allowing full view of the Belen area." which translates into the view below when the camera is pointed to the fuel pad.
I always enjoy the Belen railcam. Guess it is my favorite. I've started to notice over the past couple of weeks that BNSF has running eastbound double stack trains into the fuel island track closest to the camera. These used to almost always go to the far side. Wonder what changed or if they are just messing with those of us watching the cam?
I noticed, most of the time this happened, when there were EB trains running simultaneously on both mains arriving shortly after another on both sides of the yard. Probably stopping one train on the main to allow the other to cross over, before reaching Belen would take too much time. But that's not always the reason. Sometimes there is only one train on the "wrong" side of the facility. That's a really strange procedure as it seems to take a lot of overhead: the lead engines can not be served at the platform, since the train would foul the main. They'll get theyr fuel by road trucks (a lot of which are driving around Belen). But what about other servicing (oil, water, toilet, and whatnot)? often the train stops so that mid-train DPUs are standing at the platform and can be serviced easily if the train is short enough, it will make a second stop to servide DPUs at the trains end. But if it's too long, the lead engines would foul the main east of Belen, so that these DPUs will also have to be serviced "in the wild" On Thursday or Friday it took more than three hours until a train on the "wrong" side could leave Belen again. So what's the advantage of all this? (By the way I've seen the same happening with WB trains as well.)
04.24.20 Strange Night @ Flagstaff BNSF WESTBOUND Flagstaff west camera. 18:42 mixed freight past Flagstaff station. The engineer was really 'pouring the coals to her' as she went by. Train slows down and stops 50 yards past Beaver st crossing. Something didnt look right so I backed the video up a little and let it run again. There...I see it...NO FRED on the last car...a tank car ! The train sits just past the crossing until 19:00. At 20:00 a guys with a flashlight comes walking down the side of the track out ofthe dark to the west of the station. He is pacing the slow moving train as it backs up and stops...blocking Beaver St and San Francisco St crossings The train does some slow back and forth maneuvers until 20:20 when it pulls forward and leaves. At 20:23 the end of the train goes by. Now at the end of the train...behind that tank car are 2 freight cars. The last freight car has a FRED on it! I switched to the East Camera. At 17:30 the train had stopped about 100 yards short of the San Francisco St crossing. At 18:40 You could see massive amounts of bellowing black smoke from the locomotives. The engineer was really 'pouring the coals to her'. I watched the whole train go by and slow until that last car...the tank car went past the camera. Like I said...it slows down and stops 50 yards past Beaver st crossing. I watched from the East camera as the above scenerio plays out from a different camera angle. All I can figure is that train somehow lost its last 2 cars somewhere back in the middle of Flagstaff and had to stop and backup and go back and get them. Almost 3 hours of watching this whole scenerio play out! Strange night ! AMTRAK WESTBOUND Same night but a bit later. 20:55 Amtrak westbound very slowly pulls in Flagstaff Station. It stops between the Beaver St and San Francisco St crossings. A guy gets out of the lead locomotive and walks back to the sleeper car where he is talking to an Attendent. The Conductor comes into camera view from the East. The 3 guys talk for a minute and then they walk East out of camera View. I advance the slider until 22:15 when the Amtrak train finally leaves the station ! A two hour and 20 minute stop at Flagstaf ? Something aint right...again. I switch camera views to the East camera. I watch the train slowly come into the station. I watch the Conductor walk up and out of view. A minute later the Conductor, Attendant and the guy from the locomotive walk past the camera and back to the 2nd from last coach car. They are shining their flashlights around the rear truck on that car. AT 21:00 what looked like a BNSF service truck pulls up in the parking lot with his headlights shining in the same area of that rear truck on the passenger car. They are down the track a ways but I can see them all shining flashlights and looking at the truck on that coach car for a very long time. At 21:50 the service truck leaves. At 22:15 the Amtrack passenger train pulls out of the station. Again...Strange night ! I dont have a program to capture You Tube videos. But I did almost 400 screencaps of that night
Looks to be a new trend. I've seen two stack trains at Belen last night, where they drove along the train with those service quads and inspected each truck using flashlights. One of train had to wait more than two hours there.
Interesting night in Flagstaff ! A guy got kicked off the train for fighting !! Cops where called. Guy was cuffed and arrested ! I have 134 screen caps of the whole thing...but NO video Anyone know of a good YouTube video capture program??? PM me if you do. TIA
These are my personal favorite. Not one but THREE cameras on the UP Mojave Subdivision! Lots of UP and BNSF manifest, intermodal, tank car, autorack and grain train action! They have been my personal "security blanket" ever since the COVID Quarantines began. The world-famous Tehachapi Loop live cam: A couple miles to the east, the West Cable live cam: A couple more miles to the east, the Tehachapi Depot Museum live cam in downtown Tehachapi, CA (closest view of the trains): A new live cam will also be installed at Mojave yard in the near future! A cool thing to do is to watch an eastbound on the Loop Cam, then follow the same train about 10 minutes later on the West Cable cam, and follow the same train another 10 minutes later on the Tehachapi Museum cam. For westbound trains, do the reverse. Enjoy!
I think this Covid mess has people contemplating or doing things they may never have given a thought to. When I scroll the Flagstaff cam and see a freight train stopped in front of the Flagstaff station...the possible reason just makes me cringe. I still havent seen anything on the news...but....the last one was an obvious suicide.
