captpackrat | Entries tagged with trains

Next door to the district support center was a rail car repair facility. One of the cars they had in their yard was from the long defunct Ashley, Drew & Northern Railway. This boxcar has clearly seen better days.

The facility also had the cutest little locomotive. It's an EMC SW1 switcher, built in 1939 for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. I couldn't get a good photo of it because it was always behind a row of boxcars, but here's what it looks like.

Klaatu barada nikto

Push Button. Receive Bacon. Eat Bacon.

When I see "SDSU", I think San Diego State University, not South Dakota.

Someone had an inflatable bear named Snowflake.

Snowflake taking a break.

I finally found a use for a Mac Mini.

My laptop at work.

Current Mood: bored
Current Music: M*A*S*H on TV

A moth landed on the window of my car, so I snapped a closeup photo. Click for full size.

I was driving around some back roads trying to get back to the highway when I came across this railroad bridge. The two center support pylons are stone, the rest are made of wood. And yes, apparently this bridge is still used. I thought it was quite photogenic, so I stopped and snapped some photos.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: Thunderbird 6 on TV

In the latest episode of CSI, the killer reveals the location of one of his victims as the corner of Boulder Highway and Hasbrook. I can't find a Hasbrook on the map, but Boulder Highway runs from Las Vegas to Boulder City, Nevada. They show a train passing over the bridge where the body is hidden, and it is clearly a Metrolink train.

Metrolink only runs in Southern California. The closest any Metrolink train gets to Nevada is San Bernardino, about 185 miles away!

Ooops!

If I had to guess, I'd say that scene was shot on the Antelope Valley Line, somewhere in Soledad Canyon around Agua Dolce Canyon.

And if I'm not mistaken, the engine is an EMD F59PH; the number appears to be 861. This particular engine was involved in an accident in 2000, a tractor-trailer got stuck on the tracks and was struck by the train. The truck's load crushed the cab and injured the engineer. She was still able to radio the next train which stopped just 60 feet from the wreck.

Current Mood: amused

Deer! There's a field near here where I've seen deer fairly often, but usually I either don't have my camera, or there's someone right on my rear bumper so I can't safely pull over. (And usually when I do have my camera, there's no deer). These were taken at a range of about 1/2 mile and at about 7 p.m., that's why they're kind of grainy.

Parked on a siding in Louisville, NE, a Herzog Multi-Purpose Machine (MPM). It consists of 6 flatbed cars, each with rails across the top. At the far end is the engine, at the near end is a cab and a backhoe mounted on rails. The backhoe can traverse the flatbed cars to pick up materials such as rails or ties carried on the cars.

Parked behind the MPM was another train. The graffiti on this car caught my eye. I'm not sure what's up with the little Pac-Man ghosts. The quote in red seems a bit out of place.

Current Mood: tired

Weird error I got last night just before my computer froze up.

Red Bull gives you wheels?

It's a Subaru WRX GTR STI!

I find it amusing that these two business are located near each other.

Look boss, da train! Da train!

I got to drive on an original piece of the Lincoln Highway today. It's so incredibly narrow, smaller than the side streets in most towns. In fact, to make it usable to today's vehicles, they've had to add a narrow concrete strip along the edges to widen it an additional foot or so. Even with that, it's barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. It's also paved with brick; it was a jarring ride in my Caprice, I can only imagine what it would have been like in a rickety old Model T. There were no other cars on the road, and it's in a pretty isolated area, so you could get a bit of a feel for what this must have been like nearly 100 years ago.

If you're in Omaha, you can find this stretch of ancient highway by exiting W. Dodge (US-6) at 180th and head north about 3/4 mile.