Good Morning!
It's a comfortable 52f at 6:30am, with an immature drizzle happening outside. I'd prefer we had a full adult rain; a real soaker. It is what it is, though.
Sherrel - So sad to hear about you're hand and I highly recommend you getting that looked at. I know all too well what a dog bite can do to ones hand.
My right hand pinkie is useless, and my middle finger will only stand half erect for the hillbilly salute. This is the result of a drunken brawl with a large canine when I was quite young. The dog tore the tendons in my hand, rendering it almost useless and deformed. That was also a case where I let it self-heal, and didn't bother to get it looked at. Paid for it most of my life.
I suppose I was lucky my trigger finger was left unscathed; otherwise I might be taking photos as a lefty.
Hughie - Well done on the Majestic Hardware-n-Feed. It looks the part positioned there on the layout. I gotta say, though, the roadway underpasses look suspect. Dosen't look like the transport truck is going anywhere... Or is that just the way I'm seeing it in the photo.
It seems a quiet few days here in the shop, this past holiday weekend. Hope none of you blew you're hands off with fire-crackers.
I had a bit of luck yesterday, when the wife and I drove downtown.
As we were crossing the tracks, I looked to the east and could see a train approaching way off in the distance. So I decided it was worth parking for a moment to get a photo of the passing train. I didn't know at the time, what was coming. As a matter of fact, I didn't know what it was until it came out of a patch of trees obscuring my view of the tracks, from where we were parked.
The train came in fairly quick, only allowing me time for a couple of quick photos as it passed by and made it's escape. Turned out to be a GP38 pulling a track evaluation ensemble. Here's the only two, rather poor photos I was able to capture from the parking lot:
View attachment 129707
View attachment 129708
I knew that train was going to park in either the town yard or the staging yard, and I knew it was worth coming back to take photos, later when the
crew had gone to rest. It was worth it to me to take some risk to get better photos.
As it happened, the GP38 was parked in a not so good location in the shade of the large Home Hardware building. So I could only take photos from the wrong side according to the sun's location.
I did manage to get many photos, though. Even poor photos are better than nothing. Here are a few pics of the GP38-2W:
View attachment 129709
View attachment 129710
View attachment 129711
That is the oldest engine I've seen come into town, since I've started taking rail photos.
Of course, I took some photos of the cars, as well:
View attachment 129712
View attachment 129713
View attachment 129714
All of those photos were taken facing south, which accounts for the poorer quality. Unfortunately, the fence on the other side is too close to allow a proper photo of the train from that location. I've tried that before, and it dosen't work.
I did look on RR.net, and there are photos of this GP38 train on that site. So, this must be a specific set-up that CN is keeping together for track evaluation purposes. It is nice to see, and I find it interesting.
I'm going to watch for the train and see if I can get more, better photos. It is nice to have about a dozen pics in the files, though, for the historical record.
Yesterday, I saved all of my photos to a flash drive, just incase this PC blows up. That's happened to me before, and it drives me nuts to lose photos.
Time to be on my way. Thanks for the coffee!
