HAPPY NEW YEAR! Digging back into the Archives. Ever wonder how a chip car is loaded? Wonder no more. P&W ex-SP Chip Car at Banks Lumber
Finally got my chip loader views ready. (There is also one of these at Columbia Falls, Montana.) Here is a simple truck dump at Fortine, Montana: Here is an auger/blower style, which requires winching the car to uniformly load. The lumber and chip reload at Olney, Montana:
CP no longer has any active Alco/MLW diesels on roster. The two pictured are museum pieces (among other MLW/Alco diesels in the collection). All CP Alco/MLW power has been either retired or sold to short and tourist lines. A shame. I remember hanging out at the Ste-Therese station in the 1970s and watching the RS18s smoking along and listening to their gutteral gurgling. There's nothing like a 251!
Definitely miss them. Those days were so much more fun to railfan, than present era little boxes all looking so closely the same. Back then, at least exteriors and sounds were very clearly unique. Cannot recall who nicknamed such diesels as "honorary steam locomotives"? Wasn't it a contributor to Trains Magazine?
Mike, do you know if the Cape Breton Rwy still runs MLWs? I was next to the Port Hawkesbury yard in '96 where two MLWs were happily burbling along shunting cars. They looked magnificent in their black with gold and red trim, and the Rampant Lion amidships. Sadly, the camera was on the back seat as I sat there gawking.
Thank goodness for the Rosenberg local that comes out of Somerville every day. Some cool old stuff shows up all the time. Today I caught it in Bellville while heading home to tie up in Somerville. These are both called GP39s now. The old GP30 is now a GP39M and the other one is a GP39-2.
They're all EMD now... mostly lease units, like SD40-2s, and a couple of SD40M-2 (ex-SD45s)... Sad, sad, sad...
At first we thought these trusses were going on a bridge project on The West Virginia Secondary. They are going to The Winfield Locks and Dam. North of Charleston,WV. Their are 3 flat cars, I only got a pic of 2 of them. Curtis
I walked down the road to catch NS 1049 leading NS 1098 and NS 7623 on point of this week's train. Instead of the normal Q8E symbol it had 72K, I guess because it was left overnight at the loadout. I've got to go inside the 7623 a while back, and the 1098 is still wearing her Friends of Coal sticker on her nose my friend Jerry put there this summer.
You must have a way to know the train symbols. Are they spoken of over radio? Or? It would be so much simpler out here, if BNSF used theirs now and then, for some conversation. But normally it is just the lead engine number noted.
