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Subscribe via EmailIts Almost That Time of Year Again
by Steve Eshom
Yes, its almost time to head into the mountains for a little winter railfanning. This photo is from Robert’s and my December 2008 trip to the Blue Mountains where witnessed 18″ of snowfall in 24 hours. This trip provided some of our best winter railfanning ever and will be hard to top though we’ll try!
Just after this photo was taken Robert and I noted that the train was really moving as it rolled down hill from Nordeen. We stopped just around the corner to grab another photo and as the train’s rear end went by we heard it go into emergency and smelled the unmistakable odor of brake shoes. As the train’s FRED flashed off into the darkness of the snow storm we were not sure what the fate of the train would be.
Our engineer friend Bryan shared many stories with us about how easy it was to get a train out of control headed east out of Kamela. Simply not setting the brakes soon enough was more than plenty to start the recipe for disaster. He had also shared his own personal parameters as to when it is appropriate to plug it and based on us pacing the train on the adjacent road it was right at the max speed. Robert and I both expected the worst.
As we drove down toward Motanic we were happy to find the train stopped a mile or so after going into emergency. The train appeared to be totally intact and on the rails. Whew, disaster averted.
Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, snow, UP, union pacific, K-Line, blue mountains, oregon, kamela, motanic.
January 2nd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Hello,you are truely talented Im an artist in p.a. and want to paint one of your photos and submit it to the railway would you mind of course i would give credit for you being the photographer if im choosen great for us both you capture the photos and I in p.a. paint them Im hopeing to some day soon experience Alaska possible this will be the train lol well let me know thankyou and Bright Blessings Millie