A Spot of Color
The landscape may not be turning green yet, but there's one sure sign of spring here - a ballast train!
CP 6241 and CP 6306 lead two GREX conveyor train sets south over a classic truss bridge approaching Marquette, IA. This curve across the floodplain of the Yellow River and the Mississippi Backwater slough is below the bluffs Effigy Mounds National Monument, on the ridge in the background. The crew, running under the symbol BAL-05, has been battling a bit of congestion this morning around Harpers Ferry, but is finally getting to run out the last few miles for a crew change ahead at the depot. The former SOO SD60 duo sure brings a nice pop of color to the otherwise dull early April landscape. I’ve always liked this bridge but the ground view has always felt like it could use a slight bit of elevation. I don’t shoot “wide” with the drone as much anymore (I prefer the far-less-distorted 3x tele of the Air3 more often lately) but this scene and height seemed to suit.
A little more of the story for those that care:
The CKPC has started the annual warm-weather blitz of loads out of the pit at Waterloo, WI which supplies rock for many of the former ICE (nee-Milwaukee Road) lines into Iowa. And thankfully for us railfans anyway, these trains seem to be some of the last holdouts for some of the EMD SD products still getting to regularly run the mainline. So on this sunny beautiful Sunday morning, when I heard the CP 6241 get a warrant out of Bluff (La Crescent, MN) for a run down the river, I drove north to meet them.
The BAL-05 had a good run to Harpers Ferry, but then was stalled out by traffic ahead. There were at least 7 trains within about 25 miles of Marquette at one point for a couple hours: 4 trying to go south, two trying to come up from Dubuque and turn the corner towards Mason City, and one poor northbound that got hosed at Harpers Ferry for quite a while.
The CP Marquette Subdivision from Marquette to Bluff is one of the last bits of track that’s still under Track Warrant Control on this now-critical link between Davenport (Nahant) and St. Paul (there are a couple others, but CTC has been installed most of the way now), so the first trick DS was quite busy trying to keep on top of issuing and canceling warrants to keep everybody moving. It sometimes got a little messy (there was a shove move up a different leg of the wye in Marquette required at one point to make a meet work…). But trains eventually got to where they were supposed to be going! And since this BAL-05 was also following a slower train ahead, it allowed me to get 10 separate runbys over the course of the afternoon of this fine duo. A good early spring day even if it was still the "brown season!"
A Spot of Color
The landscape may not be turning green yet, but there's one sure sign of spring here - a ballast train!
CP 6241 and CP 6306 lead two GREX conveyor train sets south over a classic truss bridge approaching Marquette, IA. This curve across the floodplain of the Yellow River and the Mississippi Backwater slough is below the bluffs Effigy Mounds National Monument, on the ridge in the background. The crew, running under the symbol BAL-05, has been battling a bit of congestion this morning around Harpers Ferry, but is finally getting to run out the last few miles for a crew change ahead at the depot. The former SOO SD60 duo sure brings a nice pop of color to the otherwise dull early April landscape. I’ve always liked this bridge but the ground view has always felt like it could use a slight bit of elevation. I don’t shoot “wide” with the drone as much anymore (I prefer the far-less-distorted 3x tele of the Air3 more often lately) but this scene and height seemed to suit.
A little more of the story for those that care:
The CKPC has started the annual warm-weather blitz of loads out of the pit at Waterloo, WI which supplies rock for many of the former ICE (nee-Milwaukee Road) lines into Iowa. And thankfully for us railfans anyway, these trains seem to be some of the last holdouts for some of the EMD SD products still getting to regularly run the mainline. So on this sunny beautiful Sunday morning, when I heard the CP 6241 get a warrant out of Bluff (La Crescent, MN) for a run down the river, I drove north to meet them.
The BAL-05 had a good run to Harpers Ferry, but then was stalled out by traffic ahead. There were at least 7 trains within about 25 miles of Marquette at one point for a couple hours: 4 trying to go south, two trying to come up from Dubuque and turn the corner towards Mason City, and one poor northbound that got hosed at Harpers Ferry for quite a while.
The CP Marquette Subdivision from Marquette to Bluff is one of the last bits of track that’s still under Track Warrant Control on this now-critical link between Davenport (Nahant) and St. Paul (there are a couple others, but CTC has been installed most of the way now), so the first trick DS was quite busy trying to keep on top of issuing and canceling warrants to keep everybody moving. It sometimes got a little messy (there was a shove move up a different leg of the wye in Marquette required at one point to make a meet work…). But trains eventually got to where they were supposed to be going! And since this BAL-05 was also following a slower train ahead, it allowed me to get 10 separate runbys over the course of the afternoon of this fine duo. A good early spring day even if it was still the "brown season!"