Lake Crystal

Last week found me down in the New Ulm area. Tuesday evening was hot but sunny so I decided to take a ride and see if I could find a train.

I headed over to Mankato in hopes of catching something DM&E had sent my way along the river bottom. There are some scenic locations on that line, but no luck this evening. In Mankato I found an IRSS switcher working, but he tied up just as I arrived and the light was against me getting any decent shots. So off I went, to check the southbound UP main.

As luck would have it a southbound manifest was waiting to leave, and within minutes I was chasing him out of town. I shot him in about 5 locations, as the 4 lane allowed me to keep pace with this rapidly moving train. I think the best shots were these, just west of Lake Crystal as he ran west-southwest in nice light.


There sure are a lot of tall structures down in that country. You would think they handled a lot of grain or something.


One thing I noticed was how ratty these early AC motors are starting to look up close. Rust gets all of us in the end, and locomotives are no exception.

I got one more shot as he passed the elevator in Madelia, but I wasn't real happy with it. Then it was off to New Ulm once again, for another evening in a hotel room. Kind of like tonight. I'm sitting in a hotel in Virginia, and if I find time, may post a couple of shots from former DMIR tracks that I got tonight. So at least you have something to wonder about, until I find time to post again.

Jim

High Bridge Update

I had a little free time this evening and so I made a mad dash over to the Boone area to check on the progress UP has made on the new Kate Shelley High Bridge. It looked to me like they are nearing completion. The track is in place on the bridge and the approaches have been laid on each side. I wasn't able to get a shot of the bridge from the west, just the approach area.


From the east, you can get into position for a long telephoto shot of the bridge deck, which of course results in poor quality. However, you can see that trains have been out on the deck dumping ballast.


Obviously, the existing bridge is on the left, or south. The new bridge is north of the existing alignment and it looks like trains will have to swing north to gain access to the new bridge.

Rumor has it that the existing bridge will be used for maintenance vehicles once the new bridge is in service. I suppose it is cheaper to use it than to attempt to dismantle it. You really have to see the area to appreciate how huge these bridges are. It is just jaw-dropping to think that the longest and highest double track railroad bridge in the country is in...Iowa? But supposedly, it is.

UP blessed me with a couple of trains while I was investigating the area. The best shot I got was of a westbound coal empty, just after he rounded the curve leaving the bridge behind. Looks like this one has had a wing clipped.


The only other decent shot I got was of a couple of GP's in the Boone yard as I left town. What the heck, they are yellow and that's a change.


Traffic was pretty good, as there were two other trains through the area while I was there. The Boone and Scenic Valley also has their headquarters in Boone, with some interesting vintage equipment. Quite a "railroady" area, with a couple of former CNW cabooses also on display in different parts of town. But, it could never replace the Staples Sub for me.

Maybe I will get a couple of more shots this week. Check back and see how my look for trains turns out.

Jim

High Bridge High

On the evening of Thursday, August 7, I was guided by a former co-worker on a tour of the Boone, IA area. First thing, I want to say thanks to Dick for the information and the tour-it was great!

And on to the trains. If your idea of Iowa is that it's one huge, flat cornfield, prepare to be surprised. There are a lot of flat cornfields, but that's not all there is. The Kate Shelley High Bridge is the tallest and longest double track railroad bridge in the United States. Of course I have some photos, but they don't (and can't) convey the scale of what you are looking at when you first see this bridge.

A replacement bridge is currently under construction right alongside the existing bridge. It is a huge project, projected to cost more than $40 million. The new bridge will allow trains to cross at track speed rather than the slower speed they are now limited to, and is supposed to accomodate heavier cars as well.

But before we get to the bridge itself, we have to travel through Boone. On the way into town we encountered a westbound UP merchandise train that was stopped for a crew change. It was a handsome assembly with matched EMD comfort cab locomotives sporting the classic UP "wings" on the nose.


There was an eastbound ballast train waiting to depart in the yard, and I took some backlit shots but nothing that is worthy of posting. I was excited at the amount of activity we were seeing, though.

Dick drove around Boone a bit, showing me the Boone & Scenic Valley RR facilities. This was a nice looking area with a lot of interesting equipment and I would like to visit sometime when I could ride that operation.

Next we headed west of town, visiting an old overpass, where we found an empty coal train stopped well east of the overpass. I again shot him but he was so far away there wasn't much to see.

Next stop was the high bridge itself. We viewed it from the north, off the Wagon Wheel Bridge, which crosses the Des Moines River just a few hundred yards from the Kate Shelley. As soon as I got out of the vehicle I heard a train blowing for a crossing to the west, and figured he had to be an eastbound as we had not seen anything headed that way. In just a couple of minutes he rolled out onto the bridge, with three units leading a stack train. I put my batteries to the test as he crossed the river.



This was a high powered stacker, as he had two units on the tail end as well, with at least one of them operating.


It was quite a treat to get to see a train cross the bridge, and under sunny skies as well. The new construction currently taking place is very obvious in these photos. There is an extensive construction area at the west end of the bridge, which we drove by a bit later.

We ran back to the overpass I mentioned earlier to watch the stack train pass under it, and I snapped the DPU's going away. That was my first experience with seeing stack trains with DPU power.


We ran down to Moingona, the site of the bridge where Kate performed her heroics, and got a look at the plaques and depot in that location. It's a nice display and said it was open by appointment.

Passing through Boone on the return trip, the sun was getting very low, and there were trains waiting to leave the yard and waiting to enter the yard. First, the train waiting to leave, a nice glint shot.


The light was very nice for that shot. After waiting for what seemed like half an hour for the westbound, we finally headed out toward him and arrived at a crossing just as he started to pull. We simply ran out of light by the time we had a shot.

Here's one more, of Dick as he catches the eastbound waiting to leave Boone yard.


All I can say is thanks, Dick, for the tour. It was a great evening and I would have never seen all this without your help.

Later, Jim

Iowa Trip, Part 1

Tuesday morning found me southbound with a destination of Ames for a work-related event. Since I knew that the UP main passes through town, I left with the intention of doing everything I could to shoehorn some railfanning into the time I had to spend in Iowa.

Of course work comes first and the only chances I had were early mornings and one evening, but big yellow came through for me with some action, and it turned out that a former co-worker was also at this event and familiar with the area, so I had an expert guide for a bit of the time I was there. That evening will be covered in another post, while this post will include observations and photos from a couple of brief mornings I spent in Ames.

On Wednesday morning, I headed uptown and found a spot where Duff Ave. crossed the double track main. Slight curves both east and west of here promised interesting photo angles and there was a public parking lot along the tracks.

I only had about half an hour trackside, but just before I had to leave a headlight popped up to the east. I knew it would be a backlit shot but I decided since I was in Iowa I was going to see what I could do with it. The tracks pass through a wooded area right next to downtown and I was looking right down the throat as I shot this photo.


I believe this was a train of empty CWEX gons. One thing I noticed as he approached the crossing was that this is a whistle-free zone, and the horns mounted on the crossing guards were not very loud when you were out of the street right of way. I did learn later that they were loud in the right of way though.

I was so intrigued by the train that I wasn't ready for the DPU when it passed by, so no nicely-lit shot of the rear of the train. I filed this away for future reference.

That was it for the morning half hour, but on Friday morning I decided to stake this location out once more. After a brief wait I heard an eastbound approaching and set up to catch him as he rounded the curve to the west. It was another CWEX train, this time loads headed for a powerplant.


Before this train even showed up, I had spotted another headlight far to the east, and since I couldn't see the eastbound, I didn't know who I would get a shot at or which train was on which track. Turns out they were running "backwards" to my mind, with the eastbound on the north track. You can see this on my next photo, which catches the DPU on the coal loads as it passes around the curve to the east while a westbound grain train occupies the south track.


Obviously I missed the lead power on the grain train, but it seems like everything I saw had at least one unit on the rear, and I remembered my mistake from the previous day. I was ready when the DPU on the grainer passed and shot him as he sped away from me.


That's all there is for morning shots, as I needed to get back to meetings. I was pretty happy with catching at least one train each morning, and while I will always be a BNSF fan if for no other reason than geography, it was fun to see some Armour Yellow for a change.

Soon I will have the photos from my evening trip ready, including some shots of the Kate Shelley High Bridge and around the Boone area. Until then,

Jim, out.

Southern Rainy Days

Over the last couple of days work has taken me to Southern Minnesota once again, and the quirks of my schedule have dictated east/west travel. While the highway network of Minnesota is not neccesarily conducive to these journeys, it does offer the opportunity to parallel some of the lighter traffic rail lines in granger country. Trains are rare compared to the traffic I am used to on the Staples Sub but there are different colored locomotives and different scenery.

On Monday afternoon I left the Olivia area and headed east along the TCW main. Earlier in the day, I had heard a train blowing for a crossing in Bird Island and ran up to the crossing to shoot him as he throttled up one of the CAT-powered geeps that are common to this line. When he notches out the throttle, you would think that there is an Alco prime mover hiding inside the cowl given the quantity of smoke generated.


No more traffic was in evidence as I made the trek east. I did see one loco parked on a siding near Cologne but had no chance at a shot given the sun angle and the lack of access. Soon I broke away from the rail line to head slightly south.

My next opportuntiy for a shot presented itself in Belle Plaine where a UP loco was resting north of the crossing. Once again the sun angle left something to be desired but I shot him amid some trees just beginning to show signs of spring.


And that was all the action for Monday. After a meeting on Tuesday, I headed back and this time chose the rail line that parallels MN Hwy 19 as my target. It was a cloudy, then rainy day that was ill suited for photography most of the way. I met some maintenance of way equipment heading in about 3:30 near Gaylord, but no photos were attempted.

A matched set of Red River Valley and Western units were idling away at the ethanol plant in Winthrop in a steady rain. I stopped and attempted a shot but was not too impressed with the results.


Again, nothing more was moving as I continued west. I made it to Redwood Falls and had supper before heading back to Morton. While I was in the restaurant, the sun came out and I stopped to shoot a trestle in the Minnesota River bottom and dream about how nice it would look with a train creeping across it.


I decided to explore Morton a bit before heading back to the hotel and found a couple of items that were interesting. One, located next to a building identified as the Northern Prairie engine house, was the former home of a speeder car that has definitely seen better days.


There were also a couple of boxcars off their trucks being used for storage. One of them was proudly displaying the logo of a long-gone railroad in the evening sun.


All in all, an intersting trip but one that did not involve a lot of train action. It makes me thankful for the traffic that I can enjoy around home just about any time I want. I need to continue to enjoy the traffic that I am lucky enough to be near while at the same time checking out new places when the opportunity presents itself.