It's been several months since I've visited one of my favorite railfan locations, the Pepper Avenue overpass in Colton, CA, which overlooks the west end of the UP's West Colton departure yard. For a lot of last year, things seemed to be same old-same old, so I gave it a rest to see if anything new turned up.
It has. Several years ago, the SD60s and SD60Ms mostly went into storage, especially in California. I wondered if we'd seen the last of them. But as of this week, they were back big time -- and not just on locals and hauler trains. Here's one in a DPU set on a manifest arriving from Texas:
Here's another change. For at least the last ten years, the West Colton bowl trimmers -- switchers that pull the bowl tracks in the hump yard and make up the trains in the departure yard -- have been sets of three SD40-2s. Now they seem to have expanded into sets of four:
The lighting was kinda funky when I was there due to smoke from wildfires in the mountains farther south. You can see how smoky the view is in the photo below of a light power move.
It was headed west, I assume to rescue a train coming up from the harbor area.
Here's something that puts me in mind of stuff I used to do when I was in my early teens. At the time, I would see interesting equipment in my very young days as a railfan and try to make models from cardboard baed on my best estimate of dimensions. I actually learned how to use a slide rule (no pocket calculators or i-phones back then) trying to calculate dimensions from photos. (My parents, though, thought the hobby was a big waste of my time.) Here's something I'm tempted to try to mock up in cardboard the same way:
Model manufacturers have been slow on the uptake on the post-2000 generation of refrigerator cars. I found a near-broadside photo of one of these TILX cars -- which don't seem to be the same as other types -- on the web, and I also found some basic dimensions. I'm thinking about roughing something up from cardboard, in part just to revisit how I did things when I was 14. I'll see how things go and post on it if it turns out well.
Looks like somebody had a good day rail fanning. What's better than a three unit lash up? A four unit lash up! The UP engine consists look great. On top of that the trip brought back fond memories of your teen rail fanning trips and perhaps a cool project has been inspired. Thanks for posting the cool photos!
ReplyDeleteI'd be remiss if I didn't mention my concerns for your fellow Californians with this huge fire burning mostly out of control. Hope you and your family are not in harms way
We had a close call in 2006 with a mandatory evacuation, but it came out OK. Hopefully that area won't be ripe for burning for another 20-30 years. But we were up in Napa at the time of last year's fires there, too.
ReplyDeleteAlways enjoy a day out railfanning and this looks like one of them. Some nice pics of the UP. I've done some railfanning in Walnut, CA which is all UP. Some great intermodal and auto rack trains, very few manifest trains.
ReplyDeleteThe reefer cars look similar to the one both BLMA and Atlas have release. I have the first set of the BLMA Tropicana reefers (of course) and they do look great.
As John mentioned, it's a shame with all of the fires out there. I have business colleagues who were effected with the fires. Real shame, I hope they get some relief soon.
There are actually a lot of differences among these cars. It used to be that RMC and some of the other mags would cover subjects like this, but not. The BNSF cars are different from the UP cars and these, while the BLMA Tropicana cars are repaints of cars that are different from the Tropicanas.
ReplyDeleteHi, I just happened upon your terrific site here after a google search for something else and wanted to comment on this. The reefer is a 72' IL, Trinity composite material design, hence the different look with recessed door bars most obvious among other differences. Rare birds for sure, at least in my neck of the woods (WI). UP had some in yellow at one time.
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