My images are not up to the standards set by some of you, but here is one grabbed last month - pulling the Whitewater Grade westbound outside of Palm Springs with the windmills in the background.
My images are not up to the standards set by some of you, but here is one grabbed last month - pulling the Whitewater Grade westbound outside of Palm Springs with the windmills in the background.
http://MorroBayPhotos.com/4841web.jpg
I like it Marc
I stood in the rain and got soaking wet (along with my camera) to get this one. Not really worth the effort, but the adrenaline rush was
Thank you, Sir. I thought about trying to capture some train images for years, but the work produced by you and Johnny Mac got me off the fence and I'm actively working on it.
I moved from Morro Bay, CA to the Austin, TX area last month so I have to learn the patterns on the tracks around here now........
The steam engine is definately an amazing machine. I took hundreds of shots of the steam release - (whatever its called) - it was just blowing me away how awesome it was. (not literally).
Bryan, Its called a rail puller, made by Brandt. Its designed to take the slack out of up to 2 miles of CWR (continuous welded rail), and has 200,000 lbs of pulling power on each rail. You may have noticed that the new rail was haphazardly laid outside the track before this device started its work and needs to be straight to the old rails before the real track laying machines get there.
jbear2000 wrote:
That engine was totally gray with no markings anywhere. Kinda weird - almost military looking.
It's not really that weird. When a customer is really hurting for power, the manufacturer will release a new locomotive without it's 'native' road paint scheme. Here's a new EMD running on the Norfolk Southern that needs a paint job....
The steam engine is definately an amazing machine. I took hundreds of shots of the steam release - (whatever its called) - it was just blowing me away how awesome it was. (not literally).
If you're referring to the steam release that comes out of the sides of the locomotive, it's called a blown down.
They do that several times on a single trip on the D&S. Yes, it makes for great photos.
Not much going on around here - so i went up to Chattanooga and drove over to the dam. Didn't know there was a train drawbridge there as well. Sure enough - middle of the day light would have me sitting there when this BNSF comes rumbling over the water.
What kind of paint scheme is that on 9780? Was that a test scheme or is that just one that the road logo was painted over and the BNSF letters added so as not to paint the whole diesel?
This scheme was used by the Burlington Northern (now Burlington Northern Santa Fe) on several hundred EMD SD70MACs used in coal service. There are several iterations of repaints of these locos into BNSF form; currently, the railroad's standard scheme is the striking green/orange/yellow/black shown on the lead units of this train. The trailing "pusher" unit is Distributed Power controlled from the lead unit - helps with the train-handling dynamics (consider the fact that you have 10,000+ tons of train stretched out over a mile of curves, hills, etc.).
Interesting bit of information. I live within 2 blocks of the main East/West BNSF line out of Los Angeles and I have never seen one of those. But then we also do not have coal on the set coast. The Orange/Green paint scheme in a couple of interations is the norm out here. Ocassionally I see the wonderful ATSF silver and red war bonnet scheme on a unit that has been lucky to miss the paint gun.
So if I see one of those I will know what it is. Cool.
