South End 2nd District Trip

[nashvillen]

Day one of our trip is complete.  We have seen 16 separate trains from 0700 until 1800 from Oakdale to Somerset.  Here is a list of the trains and the information on them:

Time   Location      Train    Pwr1   Pwr2   Pwr3
720   Oakdale      230   UP????   UP????   
720   Oakdale      161   NS3229   UP3906   NS2571
720   Oakdale      M67   NS9336      
910   Camp Austin   283   NS8387   NS6800   
931   Camp Austin   264   NS9902   BNSF5496   
958   Camp Austin   224   NS8853   NS6757   
1104   Lancing      175   NS9283   BNSF9558   
1124   Lancing      177   NS9198   NS9085   NS8988
1225   Sunbright      144   UP4933   NS6800   
1300   Glen Mary      124   NS6618   NS2567   NS6131
1330   Glen Mary      144   UP4933   NS6800   
1351   Phillips      144   UP4933   NS6800   
1500   Ratliff      229   NS6602   NS33??   
1549   Ratliff      M33   NS6651   NS5534   
1600   Ratliff      215   NS9013   NS960?   
1642   Revilo      235   NS8897   NS9341   
1645   Revilo      51N   NS8725   NS8733   NS8715
1751   Somerset      133   NS99??   NS2582   
1814   Somerset      51N   NS8725   NS8733   NS8715


We started the day at the Super 8 motel in Harriman after having traveled there the previous evening from Middle Tennessee.  This hotel has a nice view of the tracks south of Emory Gap.  Several trains came through in the night.  In the morning a southbound Autorack train had a C39-8 in it!  This was a nice start to the day.

Our primary goal was to collect data on the CP's we could get to from Oakdale to Phillips and verify the data from Phillips to Somerset.  This we feel was very successful with several trains going in several directions over each CP.

Something that helped a lot was the trouble 144 had.  All its power died south of Sunbright and the Onieda maintenance staff had to bring down a UP SD70M 4933 from Onieda to drag the dead power to Oneida and join up with an ex-Conrail SD60M 6800 from 283 that was detached from it at Oakdale and brought north light with 144's replacement crew.  They MU'ed at Sunbright and went south to pick up their now powerless train sitting on the #1 track.  All the movement of the trains around this gave us data for several CP's through the crossovers that we might not have been able to get otherwise.

A train of note was 51N with three C 40-8's 8725, 8733, and 8715.  Nice lash up.

The weather was fairly agreeable most of the day with no rain falling on us and mostly sunny the whole day.  We expect similar weather tomorrow.

With 90% of the data collected for the areas needed, tomorrow will be spent looking for good spots for video and photos while we work south from Somerset and go back to Middle Tennessee.

[nashvillen]

I am new to web site stuff.  Here is my first attempt at putting out a photo of 177 on 5 May 06 at KD Tower:

http://home.comcast.net/~macurtis/050506_trip.html

I was happy with what my little Kodak 5.1 MegaPixel camera was able to do.

[Knothead]

is there anyway you can make your pictures smaller?  That is instant death on dial up!

[nashvillen]

I am working on that.  Sorry.  I need to get some software that will make it easier to do so.