Blue and Yellow

Last week entailed a trip to Austin, which means a chance to parallel the ICE from Owatonna to my destination and with luck, catch some blue and yellow power leading a train. It's happened in the past, although admittedly not regularly, but often enough to keep hope alive.

The trip down Wednesday afternoon and evening will keep the hope alive for a few more trips, as this train was posed for me as I neared Blooming Prairie:


As I said in the flickr post that night, it seemed like passing on this opportunity would have been plain rude. Besides, any chance to show MN Chris what a blue and yellow unit looks like needs to be capitalized upon. You don't have to drive all the way to Iowa to not see these engines. Heck, I was inspired enough to dig into my bag for the short lens to grab yet another shot.


The only problem with Wednesday evening was the cloud cover, and that was gone on Thursday. After work, it seemed like the perfect time to try my luck yet again, so it was off to the tracks and a hoped-for appointment with more of the classic EMD power. However, it was not to be. The railfanning wasn't an entire loss, though, as the sun gave me a chance to get my first well-lit shot of the former Milwaukee Road depot in Austin. At least I think that's the railroad this served:


What an attractive, and modelable, depot that is. It's almost enough to inspire one to take up passenger modeling, so a train could stop on it's regular schedule to drop and pick up HO scale passengers. Maybe someday?