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!

With a Whimper, Not a Bang

Following a recent board meeting, the parent corporation of the West Central Minnesota Railroad announced the strategic sale of the 74 mile shortline connecting Wadena and Cass Lake. During a news conference held at the railroad general office in Nimrod, MN (the terminus of a never-built proposed expansion that had been intended to serve a bison ranch) the CEO announced, "The board has decided that this is the proper time to refocus our activities to the east. The West Central Minnesota Railroad is a high class railroad that has made great strides in its ability to provided safe, timely, cost-effective service to a growing customer base. We are confident that a new operator will step forward and continue serving those customers." When pressed on the railroad's future should no new operator be found, the CEO was less encouraging. "Someone will buy it." he said, after being pestered by reporters for more than 2 minutes. "If it's a railroad operator, great, but remember that scrap prices are high too. We're outa here." He then turned tail and scampered away, an entourage of security guards covering his retreat. Local businessmen and civic leaders commented that "they never did trust that weasly @&;^%$$!"

Corporate officials following recent announcement of WCMR Sale

The next week local newspapers carried the following ad: "For Sale-11' x 42' HO Scale model railroad. Nice condition. Includes continuous run loop. Only operated by a little old lady on Sunday afternoons. Track cleaning records show meticulous maintenance. The infrastructure is in tip-top shape, except there is hardly any ballast and we do have to disclose some power problems on a couple of the #4 turnouts. Completely wired for DCC, most of the feeders tied in to #12 power bus. Loconet installed with 6 plug ins. Passing siding holds trains made up of 2-6 axles diesels and 21 cars. Most of the backdrop is painted. Bring your own rolling stock, motive power, DCC system, and customers. Buyer assumes liabilities with locomotive rebuild shop in Bemidji MN. Oh, and some of the trees have not been trimmed since a recent tornado. $12,000,000 or best offer. Call 739-4567."

Nobody called. And so ended the saga of the WCMR, once-high hopes dashed against the greed of out-of-state railroad executives known for questionable ethics. The only happy locals turned out to be the members of the snowmobile club, whose eyes twinkled at the thought of a new trail. Just goes to prove that every black cloud has a silver lining if you only look hard enough.

(Like a Phoenix, the railroad just may rise again in a different location. You can't keep a crooked RR exec down!)

"Dash"ing Through the Woods

8:00 AM found me bound for Randall. It was a lovely morning and dreams of trains were dancing in my head as I left Wadena. The tracks were quiet until I had almost reached Dower Lake when a westbound showed up on it's journey to Dilworth. I didn't get a good look at the power but decided to continue on. I'm satisfied with that decision. 

Before reaching Philbrook I spied the rear end of a stopped crude eastbound. Luckily in a matter of moments a westbound stack train had obscured my view. With any luck the crude train would be next, so I stopped catch the cantilever doing its job one more time. 

Since he was pulling from a dead stop, there was probably time to reach  Quiken Road. I quickly drove there and had time find a location to catch the train rounding the curve. Third unit was as shiny an H3 Dash 9 as I've ever laid eyes on.

 Then it was time to go to work. After spending a few hours in Randall, I check the ATCS before leaving. Sure enough the railroad had served up a westbound for my viewing pleasure. Sadly Mother Nature had also served up a nice helping of overcast. Here's what you get when you take a train and add haze.

4 more Dash 9's, these all matched in H2 paint. It was kind of pretty.

I also shot a train in the Staples yard on the way down, but due to the mixed power it didn't fit the theme of this post. I'll try and process it for Flickr. The overpass construction makes shots that once were easy quite a bit tougher.

That's my story of "Dashing" through the woods today.

Carried Away

One of the lovable aspects of model railroading is variety. Another is creativity. I love the variety, but wish I was more creative. As a result, when I do manage to figure out a way to do something, it gives me great pleasure. Here's a story of one of those times. 

This weekend, while walking through the Wal Mart in Baxter, one goal was to find something that was pretty much round and had a hole in the center. The goal was to develop a better way to simulate the "reflector" on crossing signals. It's hard to cut out a perfectly round object and then cut a perfectly centered hole. A sequin seemed to be the potential solution, so I parted with a buck or so to acquire a bag, as shown here.

Now these sequins come in a variety of sizes. The largest ones seemed like a possible candidate for what I intended, but before I even got to try that I was sidetracked by another idea. 

The sequins are slightly "dished in", not perfectly flat. As I sat pondering one of them, (yes I actually do things like that, just ask Mrs. L4T someday), a figurative light bulb appeared above my head. These looked an awful lot like tiny versions of the disk harrow blades I used to sell at the Co-op way back when we lived in Baudette. Sadly this is so many years ago that a lot of you were no more than tricycle motors at the time. Makes me feel old. 

Anyhow, after test fitting a few of the sequins on a plastic rod, it seemed like this might just be a workable plan. The following photo shows the small size, which would work for a finishing tandem disk, but a heavier offset disk would be easier to build. 

The small size was a tight press fit on the rod, but the next size up, which would be more appropriate for a heavier offset disk, had larger holes and each one needed a dab of CA cement to hold it in place. After what seemed like an eternity I had enough installed to move forward with the project. 

The next stop was an image search, where I found this. Now you might already know that I am no rivet counter, and my models are rough impressions of reality, so comparing the photo of the real thing to what is below will reveal many shortcomings of the model. And that's OK with me. I like how it looks, and I especially like how much it cost (very little) and the fact that it's something I made with my own two hands. 

I posted a picture of this thing behind a tractor the other night, in this post. Now to try and find some tiny John Deere decals.

The point of this is what makes modeling fun for me. I set out to do something, in this case improve on the crossing signals I made earlier, and end up in an entirely different place. So not only is model railroading fun, it's surprising too. And not only that, this project started and ended on the same day. I just love things like that.

Catching Up

And some more catching up. I tell you between work and family sometimes it seems there is very little time for railfanning. Oh, and I guess I should include modeling as another time sink interfering with getting trackside.

That doesn't mean there is no time to fan. Last Monday (the 21st) involved a trip to the Lake Park and Hawley area. Meetings were set up for morning, afternoon, and evening, but the drive over started in nice light. A train hit the detector on Main 2 just as I left Wadena, so a short pause at the Bluffton curve was in order. Here comes a warbonnet-led manifest, throttling up from the slow order over the Bluffton bridge where the BNSF is driving piles.

There is a "black hole" of sorts in scanner coverage west of Bluffton. The radio still works fine, but when you get close to the detector at MP174.1 long trains can pop up before the detector registers the end. I've had this happen a few times, the latest on Monday morning. As a result this shot required a u-turn and race back east to beat the train to CR 147. I shot it out the passenger window as the Escape rolled to a stop.

Finally for the trip to Lake Park, one more east of Frazee, rounding the curve. Dark skies served as a backdrop to this photo.

My day in the Hawley area ended up being busy with no free time to railfan. It was about dark by the time I got out of town and it made me anxious to get home at the end of a 15 hour work day, so the three shots above are the grand total of my production from that day.

A trip to International Falls on Wednesday and Thursday provided the opportunity to shoot a CN train in nice light at Ranier. Unfortunately, I left the camera at my folks house in the Falls so no photo was made. Sadly I didn't see any headlights upon crossing the tracks in Bemidji. 

On Friday my #1 son made the trip home from Grand Forks. He's not so much of a railfan but we do like to visit the rifle range west of New York Mills when he is home. Friday evening that resulted in 5 trains but again no photos due to the clouds. Saturday we managed to get a shot, though. Here's a manifest on the Brainerd Sub just after crossing the Gull River. Yes, I'm a sucker for H1's, always have been and probably always will be. 

And that's the trains from last week.

The Scene

The deeper I get into modeling, the more detailed I want the backstory to be. Trains running around the layout are awesome and will never get boring, but this hobby offers so much more. One element of that is operations, which I have put a fair amount of thought into and hope to begin sometime in the not too distant future. 

If you want an example of a layout with a backstory, just look at any of Ian Holmes' masterpieces. He knows what he wants a layout to do. He designs and operates it so any halfway-attentive viewer understands it too. On top of which he is a great modeler. Total package. 

One other aspect of model railroading can be photography. In a way photographing models is like photographing the prototype. You can sit your camera at a crossing and shoot train after train (especially since YOU not the railroad control the train volume-and consists). But just like in real life, that gets boring. What else can you work into the photo to make it more "interesting"? That's the challenge. And that's where this photo comes in.

Wanting something more than just a train at a crossing AND wanting a backstory, I came up with this in my free 15 minutes tonight. We're across the street from the C-Store, just a couple of blocks down from CSM Plant Food. A CSM truck just finished fueling up at the pumps. A farmer's kid, with a shiny new John Deere tractor and offset disk, has pulled in for a refreshment before heading home. A boxcar sits on the CSM spur waiting for a load of bagged beans. All of a sudden an eastbound freight decided to rumble through town. Our intrepid railfan decided to try and capture all of these things in the viewfinder of his camera, and this is the result.

To me, this kind of background is what makes the railroad environment real. It's kind of like trying to figure out what's in all those containers and trailers as a Z train passes as you are out railfanning. Just as I try to figure out what the railroad is doing to better understand why it exists in real life, I want to understand what is going on in my miniature world down in the basement.

As a side note, there is one new item I'm kind of proud of in this shot. The offset disk is a new creation, with a backstory of its own that I will share in a post soon. Here's a hint-next time you see a bag of sequins in Wal Mart, ask yourself what good they might do on the layout.

All for now.

National Train Day

Seemed it would be a mortal sin to not railfan a bit on National Train Day. (Was that over two weeks ago already?) An invite to Mrs. L4T was turned down due to her busy schedule but since she understands the sanctity of the hobby, she encouraged me to venture out all by my lonesome on Saturday evening. Here's a story of what I managed to see.

Since there wasn't much traffic showing on ATCS, I decided to run to Staples. Even if nothing was moving there just might be a train to shoot there. Sure enough, this crude empty behind a pair of Horseheads was tied down in the yard alongside a loaded sister. I grabbed a tele from the west end of the yard.

If you haven't been to Staples lately, you would hardly know the place. Work on the overpass is progressing swiftly, creating new photo angles. Here's one, from the top of a huge dirt pile on the south side of the yard.

While I was up there, I grabbed one more looking north across the tracks and Highway 10.

I was just about to give up when a coal empty on the Brainerd Sub rolled up a warrant to somewhere east of Motley. A chance at a westbound! Here's my first shot, east of Staples.

And then he had to stop before entering the Staples to wait for one other train. This gave me the chance for another shot. You can see the new signal that is waiting to be cut in.

Finally, my last attempt at the Verndale sag. My final shot from NTD.

Anyway, it was worth the trip. Always fun to get out and take train pictures.