Very true! I spent part of the weekend in Utah so I do not have much Colorado action to post this week. Local Switching An un-patched SP hiding in the yard today. Ben
It's that time of year again when Mike aka pastoolio and I are planning to head out and capture some photographs. With any luck we will get some photos uploaded here in the next couple of days. Ben
Thanks Boxcab!! Traffic was a little on the slow side but we made the best of it. Here is our first catch of the day. Hopefully Mike caught some better images of the west bound passing through Glenwood Springs. Ben
Nooope, yours are way better than mine! I don't think mine even made it off the camera. But that loaded coal train sitting behind this empty, now thats a different story -Mike
Looking forward to more good stuff from you guys. I'm placing my vote now for a Craig Branch trip....
We headed up the Craig Branch a ways and were disappointed by the lack of activity. However we have something Grande for you coming up soon from that area. Mike would you like to start the story? Ben
The Craig Branch is feast or famine, mostly famine these days. I have yet to see a train on the branch, not counting the stringlined aluminum gons I saw at Crater Loops in '08.
Sure! So after that empty ran past, we drove around to the lower road that accesses the yard. As we pull up, there is a helper set of 3 locos sitting there with a couple UP employees chatting. One jumps into the loco and the other walks towards the end of the helper set. You can see the one guy up in the cab on this shot. After a few minutes the one guy from the loco comes down and radios to the head end. The loads start moving. -Mike
After quite a few cars run by, the guy radios the head end and they roll to a stop. He pulls the cut lever and the front half pulls forward. Up at the switch Clear and ready to back down to the helpers -Mike
Releasing the brakes on the helpers After he finished with the brakes, he went into the lead unit at was up there quite a while, I would guess getting the remote control set up with the front units. Once everything was set up, the cut moved forward Up at the switch -Mike
backing down to the rest of the loads Coupled up Everything is set up and ready to go. Was not a bad way to start our day of railfanning off! I know Ben got a bunch of shots as well, I'll wait for him to get his uploaded and to take us into the next segment of the day! -Mike
And we just might catch another one shortly! Mike did a great job telling the story. Since we were together most of our images look very similar so I will try not to post duplicate photos of the cut in. While watching the crew cut the power into the coal train we also watched a MOW crew drop off a cabinet. A close up of the dismount. Ben
