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.
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.
is there anyway you can make your pictures smaller? That is instant death on dial up!
I am working on that. Sorry. I need to get some software that will make it easier to do so.