Birthday Luck
I turned 40 years old today. I usually try to see a train on my birthday. Fortunately, I had to be in the Sanborn and Lamberton area for work today, so after my meetings concluded, I headed to Tracy to see if anything was moving on the CP or RCPE. There was some grungy Canadian Pacific GE's sitting in Tracy and a grain train with BNSF power getting ready to depart the elevator at Walnut Grove, but it looked like I was going to strike out on seeing anything moving. With cloudy conditions, I wasn't going to bother taking pictures of either of those targets. So, I resigned myself to a trainphotoless birthday and pointed my vehicle in the direction of Redwood Falls and an evening of church meetings. As I approached Lamberton, though, the westbound RCPE train from Mankato appeared behind four SD40-2's! This would be worth a picture, cloudy weather or not. After a quick U-turn, I noticed a few small openings in the clouds back toward Walnut Grove. It would still be incredibly lucky to get any kind of sunlight on the train, but hey, it's my birthday, right? I did my best to guess where the sun might pop out and find the front of the train, but it wasn't going to be much. As the train approached, I thought it just wasn't going to happen. Then, less than 10 seconds before I took this picture, a beam of light shot through the clouds right to the crossing I was standing at. In another 45 seconds, it would be gone. I just stood there laughing and smiling from ear to ear at my incredible luck. Happy birthday to me!
Birthday Luck
I turned 40 years old today. I usually try to see a train on my birthday. Fortunately, I had to be in the Sanborn and Lamberton area for work today, so after my meetings concluded, I headed to Tracy to see if anything was moving on the CP or RCPE. There was some grungy Canadian Pacific GE's sitting in Tracy and a grain train with BNSF power getting ready to depart the elevator at Walnut Grove, but it looked like I was going to strike out on seeing anything moving. With cloudy conditions, I wasn't going to bother taking pictures of either of those targets. So, I resigned myself to a trainphotoless birthday and pointed my vehicle in the direction of Redwood Falls and an evening of church meetings. As I approached Lamberton, though, the westbound RCPE train from Mankato appeared behind four SD40-2's! This would be worth a picture, cloudy weather or not. After a quick U-turn, I noticed a few small openings in the clouds back toward Walnut Grove. It would still be incredibly lucky to get any kind of sunlight on the train, but hey, it's my birthday, right? I did my best to guess where the sun might pop out and find the front of the train, but it wasn't going to be much. As the train approached, I thought it just wasn't going to happen. Then, less than 10 seconds before I took this picture, a beam of light shot through the clouds right to the crossing I was standing at. In another 45 seconds, it would be gone. I just stood there laughing and smiling from ear to ear at my incredible luck. Happy birthday to me!