NEVER trust the weather man: Part II A Sunny Day in Burnside

[butch]

Believe it or not Emmett and I both believed the weather report that today would be sunny...again.  This time the forecast was correct.  We hooked up south of Burnside along with Caleb.  This is the chronicle of my day.

There were several NBs that had the SBs hanging out at Woods.  The first pic is from Cave Springs Road.  Not much to it except to show the potential for a future shot.  If you look close in the middle of the fog, you can see back end of a container.  There were two SBs waiting at Tateville and 161 actually was the first SB to get to me, now below the bridge at Keno.  Included in the ten locomotives was a Ferrocarril Mexicano unit 5th and three switchers 8-10th.

[butch]

Meanwhile exchanging texts with Emmett-who I'm sure would have arrived much sooner if he hadn't needed to continously pull off the road to read/respond to them-I decided to move down to the Dead Ox Hollow [DOH] cut to wait for 177.  By now there had been four NBs, none of them rating a post, but I knew 177 was already south of Tateville.  Unfortunately, when I heard it blow for the crossing, it was not the Keno crossing, I had yet another NB coming up from KD Tower and it was coming fast...too fast.  It was on main 1 and it totally wrecked my shot of 177.  Fortunately, 143 was not to far behind having waited patiently for Emmett and Caleb to get to Keno.  Also fortunate for me because it was 11:30a and the next SB did not come through DOH until 2:10p.  At least I had good company to talk to; and when things got slow, Caleb's son Noah was there to entertain us.

[butch]

With the sun moving further west, we decided to move to Cave Springs Road for the next SB.  Unfortunately, the afternoon lull continued and eventually the shadows convinced us to move again, this time to the Burnside Bridge.  While parked across from Jordan Baptist Church, Emmett made the comment that changed my afternoon.  He said "I wonder if there is a trail down to the lake from here?", or something like that anyway.  The combat railfan in me immediately perked up and it took less than a minute to find it.  I hiked down near the edge of the water to check it out and immediately figured out several things; main 2 had the makings of a good shot, I had not brought my long lens down with me, and the trail back to the car was pretty much straight up.  So I climbed back up, reported my findings, grabed my lens, and headed back down to wait for 54G which we knew was going to come south...we hoped.  Finally, about 4:55p it showed up.  These two shots have been enhanced by EMB mojo. 

After scaling the path back up to meet the Emmett and Caleb-who had chosen the easy, anyone can do it, shot from the US 27 bridge-we discussed the continuing lack of traffic and I decided to call it a day.  But it was a good day.

[E.M. Bell]

I choose the easy way, but for me that was the only way. I have no more mountain goat left in my blood, besides, I felt it prudent that someone be around to call 911 and ID the body if needed.   Folks, that was a STEEP climb and looked dangerous from the top of the trail, and that was the best part!

To the victors go the spoils, and your hard work netted a view of the bridge I dont think we have seen here on Jreb before.

Butch usually seems to avoid my camera, but not yesterday. Here he is just as he came back up from the bottom of the cliff.  




And a shot of him (taken from the easy to get to spot on the US 27 bridge)...  This might give you some perspective on just how steep that trail really was.  

[cmherndon]

After scaling the path back up to meet the Emmett and Caleb-who had chosen the easy, anyone can do it, shot

Even a caveman can do that shot.  Like Emmett, I don't have any mountain goat blood in me.  Besides, I would hate to see the results of trying to carry a 31 pound toddler down the side of the mountain. We might make it down the trail, but not back up.  ;D

[Matt L]

Included in the ten locomotives was a Ferrocarril Mexicano unit 5th and three switchers 8-10th.

Nice catch on the switchers!

[butch]

It's a great little spot that I'll try again.

[Ed Fury]

I want to go to burnside and many other places on the CNO&TP. I always look at these photos and sort of drool.