Escaping from the office, I went trackside today for just shy of an hour and saw plenty to keep me entertained. I started out at 8th street, where a couple signal maintainers were testing the grade crossing circuit which made for some interesting antics as drivers tried to figure out what was going on. Stopped back at the westbound control signals was a manifest that looked like a Pasco-Lake Yard with a couple of SD40-2s – BNSF 7023/7165.
I headed up to the depot and ate my lunch while an eastbound Tacoma stack train came down and made the turn onto the Fallbridge sub. Another freakin’ stack train… I guess I’ll ask if anyone knows why. Power on the stack train was a green BNSF 8039 followed by two Heritage I FURX units… 7257 and 8124. I waited a while and caught the northbound M-LYDINB come by the depot with the BNSF 616 (patched warbonnet) and the green/black 7011 for power.
I made a loop up to the shops to see what might be sitting around… quite a bit of power was there, I was able to get numbers off the 743, 3008, 3126, 740, 4783, and 5063 (all BNSF). Up at 39th street the H-EVEBAR sat with the BNSF 865, 997, and 535… both of the B40-8W units were in Heritage II paint… that used to be a rarity but it’s becoming more and more common. As much as I like the warbonnet scheme, when it starts to fall apart it looks like crap, and I’ll take fresh Heritage II over peeling warbonnet any day.
