Friday the 13th, Under the Overcast

After my trip to Virginia, I had one last little jaunt for the week. I needed to pick something up in Perham and bring it back to Wadena. So Friday morning, I was off under a leaden sky. I still brought the camera with, because who knows what you might see?

With no ATCS on the track between Detroit Lakes and Wadena, I was at the mercy of the BNSF as far as trains. The track and the highway separate so Highway 10 can loop around the north side of New York Mills, and darned if I didn't spot a stack train headed east as I neared the tracks on the west side of town. The light was funky, and I wanted to try a shot, so a quick u-turn put me in hot pursuit of the eastbound. I caught up with him before reaching Bluffton, and got this shot.


Now there is one complication to this that I haven't yet mentioned. While I was running this train down, I met a standard coal empty east of Mills, in one of the spots where it's hard to see the power. I got a glimpse of the GEVO leader, and passed him up. But as he passed I swore I saw a CN unit in the consist, and it seemed to be too far back to be the second or third unit. I filed this under "interesting things I see along the tracks" and continued my pursuit of the stack train.

After resuming the trek to Perham, I caught up with the MAC that was pushing on the coal empty. I whipped the Escape to try and run down the lead units, and sure enough something was strange, although I couldn't tell exactly what. Since it was Friday the 13th I sailed past Perham on the bypass and caught the headend on the other side of town. After a couple more miles, I was able to get to the north side of the tracks for a shot.


Of course I had the wide lens on, and you can't see what I wanted to show, so I grabbed a going away of the rear 3 units in this consist-a CN GEVO and a pair of SD70-2's. Now that's odd-unusual-strange or whatever you want to call it.


I know these are terrible shots, but I had to post them as there is a "to be continued" element to this post that requires me to include the story of the CN locos. You'll have to wait for the next report to hear the rest of the story...

Jim