Winter Wonderland

After managing to re-arrange a scheduled day in New Ulm today, since the drive home after work looked light a bit dicey, I was tucked in the bedroom office catching up on a stack of that stuff you put off when more important things are calling, until it becomes more important itself. I made good progress before lunch, hardly looking up from the paperwork and keyboard, so when Mrs. L4T hollered that the soup was hot, weather conditions caught me by surprise. It was snowing like it does in Cass Lake!

After lunch was gobbled down ATCS showed an eastbound lined through Wadena. The combination of a train and the snow was enough to get me to play hooky for an hour or so. The eastbound and I arrived at the crossing similtaneously, so no shot in Wadena. The ultimate target was Staples, and with the road conditions there seemed no way to catch up to that train. He must have been running slowly, though, since by the time I made the four lane I was on his tail. I spent a lot of time in the snow covered passing lane but made it to Staples ahead of the train and jumped out of the Escape at the depot, to shoot these two as he approached:




The snow was really coming down at this time. It was almost snowing too hard to take a picture.

ATCS told me that I should soon see a westbound as well, so after a wait of a couple of minutes, here came a pair of ACe's. This COLX train only had the two units up front, as I waited through the blizzard to shoot the DPU and got nothing. The pine trees on the right edge of the shot make it kind of Christmas-y.


When I had checked ATCS earlier, another train was shown as waiting at a red signal on the Brainerd Sub. So I swung over to shoot yet another coal empty, this on led by a GE. Still snowing!


It looked pretty dead after this, so I decided to chase the second coal train back to Wadena. I still had some of the semi-important work to get done. I snatched one more photo on the way home, at Aldrich.


By the time I got home, the snow had ended. As long as it seemed over for a while I shoveled the driveway and then went back to work. I had a nice little break from the drudgery of the computer today!

Jim