Day Trip

On thursday I made a trip to Hallock.This was a quick trip-up and back the same day, hopefully with a little work mixed in to make it worthwhile. What that meant was that any train pictures had to work out perfectly, in order to not cut into travel or work time too much.

I was pretty lucky to start out with, intercepting an eastbound COLX train before even making it to New York Mills. Since the power up front was a pair of EMD's, a quick u-turn was in order.



My luck seemed to be holding when a headlight appeared just as I approached Perham. This time it was a different kind of energy-crude oil. Either the railroad or the Country Highway department has done us a favor by clearing out some brush west of the Otter Tail River bridge, allowing this shot, which was not possible in the past. 

No trains on the CP or the Noyes Sub all the way to Hallock. Just south of my destination, I did notice some activity on the new North Star Agri loop. It's hard to tell from this shot, but there are BNSF 3 bay covered hoppers, I presume hauling canola, along with tank cars and 4 bay covered hoppers for the finished product. Quite an assortment of cars at the plant, but no unit train. I think there was a trackmobile sitting near the main, which is well away from the highway at this point.

My trip home was fairly uneventful. I went through TRF but saw nothing on the CP all the way to DL. The clouds had rolled in by that time, bringing spotty heavy showers, so I wouldn't have shot them anyway. The Staples Sub had a couple of trains but after a long day I was beat and passed on them. So you get the entire helping of photos for the day in this one post. Enjoy!