Richard's American Train Adventures

[richard carr]

I was a good 10 minutes behind the train, but I knew it wouldn't be moving that fast but the real challenge was deciding if it had gone up the branch or not. I was lucky as I drove along the river road I could see the end of the train, it had gone up the branch. I now needed to find a spot where I could film it. Android Auto is useless as it doesn't show railway lines on the map in the car. Thankfully google maps on my does.
So having found a spot I set off again.



and here it is crossing a fairly busy road, it's another GP20c ECO

There are no gates on this crossing just lights





So having captured the train here, I now had to guess where it was going again. I started driving trying to find a good location but the first didn;t have a view of the tracks at all then the second turned out to be a road about 10 miles long and sat nav wanted to take me to the wrong end of it.
Finally I made it to where I hoped the train would eventually get to.

After about 15 minutes I was coming to the conclusion that it had pulled off somewhere else and I had missed it, so I set off for the CP yard at the south end of the city. Driving along I noticed another grade crossing in the distance just after I had passed the Iowa National Guard base with at least 6 Chinooks parked around. So I went to explore and found this.

It all looks pretty new and it certainly wasn't on the map





Then I heard the horn, then a pickup truck pulled up about 20 yards from me and driver got out. He turned out to be the President of the Davenport Industrial Railroad, and told me the train comes up here every Sunday, it would go past all the cars in the above photo and then reverse into the sidings and drop off those cars, come forward and pickup the cars to take back. It would then take about an hour to get back to the river where it drops down over a wooden trestle bridge.





The train has now run past the sidings and is going to reverse in.



It's now going to reverse into the siding to pickup the empties



Now it departs






I hurried back into and got ready to film it coming over the trestle bridge, unfortunately I didn't manage to get any photos of that I was too busy filming.

The train then cleared the switch and then had to go and lock it all up in the mainline position, this gave me time to move down the line to where the CP line passes under the Iowa I line.
Here it is climbing out of the dip

 

[mickoo]

Some days the moons of Tatooine align

 

[richard carr]

Hi Mick

Yes sometimes is does all come together, that turned Sunday into a great day but meant I never went to Fort Madison.

Richard

 

[mickoo]

Hi Mick

Yes sometimes is does all come together, that turned Sunday into a great day but meant I never went to Fort Madison.

Richard

Richard,

No problems, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, I know what it's like prospecting you have to take whatever you can find and run with it, especially in the US where trains can be either full on or really spasmodic/non existent.

Six hours on a cliff top in the Gorge with the prime shot all lined up and not a single train, lovely scenery, plenty of time to cleanse one's mind and defrag and a lovely tan but no trains!

 

[richard carr]

I tried following the train back to the yard but it moved a bit quicker on the mainline and I got stuck in too much traffic.

So I went to the south end of the main CP yard to take a look at the round house.







Nothing was going on and there were plenty of signs implying rail fans were not welcome.

Heading back towards the city there is a smaller yard so I drove past that just in case something was happening.

So 2205 had dropped the cars of somewhere and parked itself here.



There was another GP20




I then decided to go to Silvis to see if you could see anything of the Railroad Heritage of Midwest America site. The answer is no you can't see anything, you can see a fair bit of the Iowa Interstate yards and I did see 2 locos go over the bridge. When I got back and was having a walk along the river, they came back over the bridge with a short train. You can just about see them in this photo. The building with the clock tower is part of the Rock Island Arsenal. It's still a major arms manufacturing site for the US army.




After this I went back to the hotel to start processing all the video and photos, then went to the Stompbox Brewery for dinner. It has all the usual american full fat food. I went for Nachos and hot wings. The good thing is that you can sit outside near the bridge and right by the CP line. The beers not too bad either.

 

[richard carr]

Finally onto Monday, I didn't need to be in the office until Tuesday so I planned to drive to Galesburg in the morning, see what was going on and then drive back to Chicago in the afternoon, it's a solid 3 hour drive back to the car hire place at O'Hare.

Monday mornings weather was a complete surprise, my phone said fog and when I looked out of the window, it certainly was. I was expecting to be mainly in the river valley, but no it was very foggy all the way to Galesburg, but as I passed the "Welcome to Galesburg population 33600" it all magically disappeared.

The first stop was McDonalds for breakfast, then down to the station.

This GP50 was parked in the museum line.







So switching was going on using the old faded Santa Fe war bonnet loco






It really could do with some new paint.

Then I went to check out the line to Peoria, but nothing was happening there not that I really expected that it would be.

Looking back towards Galesburg



and on to Peoria




A train of hoppers waiting to depart towards Chicago or it could go north along the Mississippi



The hump was busy






And yes the switchers do go over the hump



The second loco 301 is an SD40-2 B unit.


I then drove to the end of the yard at Saluda



It was switching in the yard, another very faded Santa Fe locomotive by the looks of things.

 

[mickoo]

BNSF 3162, now there's a rare find if there ever was one; still sporting the five man cab, not many of those kicking around any more I think.

Interesting to see the footwells blanked off with safety netting so it's presumably going to be there some time?

I enjoyed Galesburg, always something going on, even if it was just the yard unit chugging back and forth with endless cuts of manifest stock, tatty it may be but to me it still sounded good.

 

[richard carr]

So after a spending 30 minutes at Saluda hoping for something to happen I set off back towards the yard on US 41 north.
This crosses the line heading west on an over bridge and as I approached you could see a train heading west. So I did a quick left turn to follow the train, it wasn't moving too fast as it was still leaving the yard.
I eventually turned onto 170th street and headed down to the grade crossing.
I didn't have long to get the video camera setup and only had time to grab a photo after the train had gone past me.
This train is heading west and is going to take the connector onto Transcon 2



Trains can run straight on and then head west to Burlington, passing under Transcon 2 on the west side of Cameron.

In the distance across the fields you could see Transcon 2 with a steady stream of stack trains, mainly heading east.




Once the train had gone past all the signals went out, but 5 minutes later came back on again, a sure sign that something isn't too far away.



You could just make out this one in the distance, Here I'm looking east towards the yard, the line straight ahead goes to the north end and into the Amtrack station, the line to right goes to the south end of the yard, with a yellow signal indicating something is coming.



The train in the distance was a stack train.

And here's the one heading into the yard





I saw one more train heading west and I had a flashing yellow signal on the track the stack train had been on, but half an hour later there was still no sign of anything coming. At this point I decided to pack up and head back to Chicago, it was boiling hot to say the least and I was feeling frazzled.


That was the end of another fun trip.

Plenty of video to follow.

Richard

 

[Brian Daniels]

Combining empties is quite common, I've seen MRL do it a couple of times and UP, the problem then becomes one of length and getting them in the 'hole' if need be, not a problem on predominantly double track lines, but places with a lot of single track need some planning.

I understand the typical coal train length is 120 cars and is usually defined by the loading and unloading facilities which have set loop lengths, coal will be one of two traffic flows, export of domestic power generation and follow two types of car, Bethgon (rotary unloaders) or floods (typically fixed couplings but I've seen floods with rotary couplings as well).

On Transcon 1 in the PNW (typically) rotaries are for export coal, floods are domestic power stations I believe.

Hope I got the right thread but a while back there was discussion about rotary couplings on coal tipplers. This just went through Fort Madison today with a tippler with a rotary at both ends if the green ends on the 3rd from the bottom of the screen are anything to go by! Forward of this the rotary ends are farthest from us but after this the rotary ends are closest to us.

 

[daifly]

Hope I got the right thread but a while back there was discussion about rotary couplings on coal tipplers. This just went through Fort Madison today with a tippler with a rotary at both ends if the green ends on the 3rd from the bottom of the screen are anything to go by! Forward of this the rotary ends are farthest from us but after this the rotary ends are closest to us.

View attachment 244179

Brian

That's a screenshot. There's no link.

Dave

 

[Brian Daniels]

Brian

That's a screenshot. There's no link.

Dave

Link to what Dave? It is a screen shot of the train.

 

[daifly]

Sorry Brian

From your post, I was expecting a link to a video of the train rather than a static pic. I stand corrected.

Dave

 

[richard carr]

I'm back in the US again, this time on holiday witht he Boss, so there won't be that much chance to rail fan but there will be some.

We flew into Chicago and then drove to Bloomington for the first night. I55 follows the UP line south but the only train we saw was an Amtrak Mid West service heading north to CHicago..

The next day we set off for St Louis, for me to attend the RPM meet there. We were not in hurry so we went the long way round to see the white squirrels in Olney IL. On the way we passed over numerous train tracks but the only train we saw was this one.





Thankfully we did see a white squirrel too




After that it was another 2 and half journey into to St Louis.

Fortunately the view from the hotel room was a good one



An ethanol train heading into the city. This line follows the river right past the Gateway Arch.
There's a small climb here and you could really here the trains approcach, fortunately the crossings were all "No Horn" so they didn;t keep us awake at night.




You can just about make out the 1987 other ethanol warning panel



So last Friday I went to the show and met up with Jim. As usual there were some really nice models on show, most of which were HO.

Iowa Scale Engineering were there and I finally gave in abought a proto throttle after playing with their loco for about half an hour, it was fun.

The pusher on the back.



The only downside this year is the heat, it's hot 100 degree hot.

RIchard

 

[richard carr]

I did take a few photographs at the show







These are nice weathering jobs but both are 3 rail



A nice bridge on the large HO layout that was there, sadly I didn't see then run one train on Friday.

Then I found a book for the boss, not that I bought it.



In the evening we went to the ball game, the stadium is right in th emiddle of downtown






Saturday was Arch day, it turns out you can go up it in the Tram. It's not quite what I had in mind as a tram and if you are claustrophobic it probably isn't for you but there are some good views from the top.






You can just make out the boss in the middle by herself



Looking across the river to Illinois, this place has it's own switcher.

Now looking across the city







Another tank train passing through the park





We then went back tot he hotel and caught another train

 

[JasonD]

Thanks for introducing me to white squirrels, Richard, oh and St Louis. My only other encounter with squirrels in the USA was in the Sebastian's Back Yard in Chicago about 25 years ago enjoying a lemonade when suddenly everybody leapt to their feet, clearing the tables, and ran inside. Ron (Des Plaines Hobbies) explained that you didn't want to be caught out in the open and bitten by the little critturs although I can't remember if it was grey(!) or red(?).

The D&H, that I follow, had the Alco Works in Schenectady, NY online so not many EMD switchers (well, one acquired from CP eventually), but your pic of the GMTX SW-? built 9/50 forced me to look it up and here's a nice pic in ICG days 6/83 (new cab, walkway handrails, etc, but still original AAR Type-A trucks with friction bearings:

ICG SW14 1423

ICG SW14 1423 ICG SW14 1423, Hawthorne Yard, Cicero, Illinois June 26,1983, photo by Chuck Zeiler. Built in September 1950 as IC SW7 9414 (c/n 11662) on EMD Order 4054, it was renumbered to 414, rebuilt in 1980 to SW14 1423.

www.rrpicturearchives.net

Keep 'em coming!!
Jason

 

[Dog Star]

Oh come on Richard, that last photo... you really ought to be writing about that freight depot of the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad or at least giving other WTers an opening for chapter and verse (Big James? Jordan? Mickoo? ).

Rgds, Graham

 

[richard carr]

Oh come on Richard, that last photo... you really ought to be writing about that freight depot of the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad or at least giving other WTers an opening for chapter and verse (Big James? Jordan? Mickoo? ).

Rgds, Graham

Hi Graham

I would love to be able to tell you more about the yard over the river, but I can't I know next to nothing about it.

I can tell you that we drove past it when we left St Louis the next day and we did see a load of old faded BNSF locos at the end of the yard but I couldn;t really stop to explore any further.

I did though get to stop at Thebes, more to follow in my morning, it's bed time here in Memphis.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

So on Sunday we had to drive to Memphis, it's about 300 miles as we choose to go via Cairo IL.
This is where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet, so we took IL route 3 south.

After a couple of hours we passed a train, so hurried on to get ahead of it ,

I just managed it and grabbed these photos





As you can see all a bit hurried, that bloomin gate !




So we got back in the car and headed after the train again. Then I saw a sign post for Thebes 5 miles. So we headed their as knew that was where the train was going to cross the Mississippi. Thebes was the Southern Pacific crossing of the Mississippi.



and here it is going over the river.





After this we continued on to Cairo

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

I finally gave in abought a proto throttle

How will that work in the UK, Richard? I thought US wireless throttles are 'illegal' here due to the radio frequencies they use?

 

[oldravendale]

So on Sunday we had to drive to Memphis, it's about 300 miles as we choose to go via Cairo IL.

Then I saw a sign post for Thebes 5 miles.

After this we continued on to Cairo

I've not seen any pyramids yet,,,,