The illuminated stop bar on the crossing at 8th St. in Vancouver is a classic.
On Sunday my family and I went for a walk along Vancouver’s Columbia River waterfront. The waterfront trail is not far from the BNSF mainline and we regularly see trains on these treks. On Sunday a westbound Kalama grain train was stopped on main 1 at Eighth St. with its rear end strung out to near the FMC steps.
With main 1 occupied main 2 saw all the activity. When we arrived a westbound manifest was just gliding in to a stop. As we walked east along the trail my daughter Haley went about identifying the railroads on all the cars. Her favorite find was an SRY (Southern Railway of BC) center beam which she identified as MRL because its blue color.
On the return portion of our walk a second westbound (PAWVAW) crept by. As is pretty normal the hogger set some air and smoothly brought the train to a stop. Then out of the blue…whoooooosssssshhhh. Tammy and Haley both jumped out of their skin at the sound of the air dumping on the train. Slightly startled, Haley jabbered on for several minutes about the train and the big noise.
I could hear the air coming back so I figured there couldn’t be any big issue and I guessed it was probably just a kicker. We continued our walk under the overpass to the Old Apple Tree park. In the mean time the PASVAW started working on their set out. First they went ahead 20 cars or so then SLAM the slack ran in is as they stopped to get the yard lead switch. Then SLAM again as the slack ran out as the train started west again. I’m guessing at this point the hogger was nervous about using the train air because of the kicker incident earlier.
After the last SLAM the PASVAW continued into the yard and we hopped in our car to head for home. Enough of the stopping for one day…
