Once again it's late Friday, the kids just went down after being ridiculous....and I got nuthin...but I'm sure you all do.
Time for some Alco action! An MLW S-3, CP 6591, in operating condition, at the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, Smiths Falls, ON: IMGP1661_S-3_CP_6591_RMEO by Mike VE2TRV posted Jun 17, 2016 at 8:12 PM Not only is it an operating loco (the museum uses it for train rides on their grounds), but it's open and you can climb aboard and take a look inside the cab. And yes, that's a really old wood boxcar behind it.
With the UP bridge out east of Rosenberg, a lot of "foreign" traffic was ending up on the BNSF Galveston sub this last week. Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana (TFM) is about as foreign sounding as you can get. Now called Kansas City Southern de México, it is a subsidiary of KCS. Their trains were coming off their tracks from Victoria, Texas onto the UP Sunset Route and then backing up onto the BNSF to head south toward Galveston, or in some cases reversing direction of the train by moving the crew to what was the DPU at the other end and heading north. There are two interchange sidings between the Victoria Sub and the BNSF tracks where they could pull through directly in one move but the switches are manual and not controlled remotely by the dispatchers. They are also jointed light weight rail so not meant for a lot of traffic. So they prefer to back through the heavy duty interchange track that bridges the north east quadrant of the diamond. This train is already on the BNSF main and on its way south.
The BNSF still maintained their normal traffic while putting up with all the UP, KCS and Amtrak trains seesawing through the interlocker. Here is a "Brown Worm" crossing the diamond south bound. In the foreground are the two light weight interchange tracks that I mentioned in the post above.
These two were in Seattle. I had taken the train to Seattle and when I got out of the King Street Depot there they were
NS 9812, 9171 and IAIS 719 pull an empty grain train towards Des Moines and Heartland CO-OP facility. Seen here passing some goldenrods and growing corn east of Victor, Iowa. Iowa Interstate Newton Sub. 6/18/2016
Yup... a nice oil-fired barbecue... that sucker threw oil through the hot exhaust... The crew must have caught it and shut it down in time for a repair to be possible.
