The final days
With news of another set of searchlights having fallen at Chadwick and replacements partially in place at Burke, I made it a point on a sunny Saturday, April 23 to head down to the west end of the BNSF C&I to capture a few shots of what remains of the CB&Q searchlight signals. Traffic was fairly busy on this particular day, and I had plenty of trains to try a number of different angles of the signals at Burke. The replacements were already up at East Burke, and the signal crew was at work on the day of my visit placing at least one of the signals at the west end of Burke and readying things to place the other two. By now I would expect all of the signals to be up there as well.
In the morning I managed to catch this meet between a westbound stack train (led by BNSF 7407) and an eastbound vehicle train (led by BNSF 7015) at Burke, which provided the opportunity to watch the signals change indication a few times as the dispatcher lined the EB into the siding and then lit the main line green for the WB. Their replacements won't have quite the same character. But I suppose in another 40 or 60 years I could find myself out here trying to get the last of my shots of the "Vaders" before they are replaced with the latest technology that I probably can't even imagine yet...
The final days
With news of another set of searchlights having fallen at Chadwick and replacements partially in place at Burke, I made it a point on a sunny Saturday, April 23 to head down to the west end of the BNSF C&I to capture a few shots of what remains of the CB&Q searchlight signals. Traffic was fairly busy on this particular day, and I had plenty of trains to try a number of different angles of the signals at Burke. The replacements were already up at East Burke, and the signal crew was at work on the day of my visit placing at least one of the signals at the west end of Burke and readying things to place the other two. By now I would expect all of the signals to be up there as well.
In the morning I managed to catch this meet between a westbound stack train (led by BNSF 7407) and an eastbound vehicle train (led by BNSF 7015) at Burke, which provided the opportunity to watch the signals change indication a few times as the dispatcher lined the EB into the siding and then lit the main line green for the WB. Their replacements won't have quite the same character. But I suppose in another 40 or 60 years I could find myself out here trying to get the last of my shots of the "Vaders" before they are replaced with the latest technology that I probably can't even imagine yet...