All Mixed Up

While many of you have been doing unbelievably cool things like chasing snowplows, or combing the Paynesville Sub in search of unique power, or roaming all over northwest Minnesota searching for windmill trains (and getting a top shot not only for the day but for the WEEK in the process), or building on massive modular layouts, I have stuck to the mundane hunt for trains on the Staples Sub. The trains are out there, but so are the endless parades of pumpkin-colored Dash 9's painted in the H2 scheme, with only an occasional warbonnet or H1 unit to break the monotony.

After so many, they all start to run together. So while I was processing a couple of shots from the last week, the following pictures jumped out and grabbed me. All of the shots below were taken within the past 7 days. What do you see that they all have in common?




If you said someone put the wrong nose door back on each one, you would have noticed the same thing as I did. I noticed a long time ago that the "BNSF" on the cigar bands of some of the Dash 9's is in a smaller font than others. Apparently the shop forces don't care, as they are more than willing to install mismatched doors on multiple units. If you take a close look at the middle photo, you can see that they are not even too concerned about the paint color. It looks like the door on the 4401 came off a warbonnet. So it's not only the AC covers on the fireman's side that are sometimes mismatched, it's the nose doors as well.

The top two were shot last Saturday, Feb. 13, and the bottom one I got this afternoon coming through Wadena. I also got a couple of shots earlier in the day before the overcast got so thick, one of which I found to be fairly interesting. I'm doing a little research to see if I can dig up any background before that post, which very well may show up tomorrow.

Thanks for looking, Jim