I shoulda just stayed in bed

[E.M. Bell]

If your looking for trip report brimming with a variety of locomotive models, builders, paint schemes and locations....this aint it..  

14 Days...thats how long it had been since I had day off from work. Things worked finally out on Friday (ie..nobody decided to die) and the weekend would be mine. I spent Friday evening trying to decide what to do with all the free time, and the list  contained several items. Get a hair cut was #1, and then there was the choice of sleep late and do nothing or head out to the tracks and enjoy the day...In retrospect, I probably should have just stayed in bed...

I awoke around 0700, grabbed the camera, and headed out to get my ears lowered. Figured if I got to the Barber shop early, I could avoid the crowd and get out quick...wrong.   After waiting for a hour and a half (and discovering that my barber raised his price...SEVEN dollars for a cut) I managed to get on the road and meet Caleb. We headed South to Danville with no idea what would be running.

The first order of buisness was to shoot a few rosters of the NS T19 local power at Lawrenceburg (Ky) . They have had  NS 7126 (GP60) for several weeks now, and I hadnt had the time to pop the usual roster shots of it. I hear that the regular conductor on this job had some good things to say about this fine EMD product.  Maybe he has seen the light, or maybe its just the AC  (click on any of the thumbs for a bigger pic, should you see anything worthy of a look)





We arrived at the Wye near Danville Ky around 1030, and shortly after the North End DS is on the radio talking to NS 229, who had struck a car near Lexington.  This would serve to back up the railroad for over 2 hours. We watch NS 375, 216 and 144 at the wye (and dont shoot any of them) and then retire to lunch at Krystals. While eating, Greg catches up to us, and after mass amounts of Double cheeseburgers, chil-cheese fries and chil-pups are consumed, we moved to our usual spot under the shade tree at the yard to see what would show up.  

NS 223 arrives from Louisville shorlty after we get to the yard. He has a pair of spartan cab SD70's for power, so we head down the road a ways to get him someplace more scenic than the crapmed confines of DV. Little did we know that this would be the only thing we would shoot with EMD leading..as I said before, shoulda stayed in bed and saved the gas!

NS 223 departs Bowen Ky while a farmer works hay in the foreground.



Thanks to a 25mph slow order, we caught 223 once again as he split the signals at Milidgeville.



As the afternoon progressed, we observed several more trains..All with catfish leading...just great. Finally, out I decided to shoot somthing, fish or not. I bummed Gregs wide angle lens (and hoped my camera would go into shock by putting such a thing on it) and searched for a shot. The 229 finally got out of DV, and I framed up a nice rual scene with him.

NS 229 at Moreland KY...I stooped so low as to shoot a catfish leading with a wide angle lens, what is the world coming to?



AS 229 passed by, I noticed that his lead motor, NS 8895, had some damage to the engnineers side. Im not sure if this is fire damage, just rust , bad paint  or what.  




After 229, more stuff ran...North, South...all with Catfish leading...the camera stayed in the bag. We wound up back in Danville to watch more, You guessed it, Ge's leading 133, 111, 23G, 167. Somewhere in the middle of all that Erie entertainment I managed a nice nap, and finally came back to life with the sound of a hard working EMD close by. The East side yard job was using a GP38-2 to gather up some cars for the RIP track. We hiked up to the bridge over the North end of the yard to shoot the action.



After the yard job cleared up the North main, Triplecrown 264 lined up to leave town, with...drum roll.... a GE leading... Imagine that...