As Richard has already written, I had the good fortune to join him for a few days at the St Louis HO meet (that I'll cover in my other thread) and some time track side out and about.
I'll be honest, this is not my usual part of the country of location, I dislike the clutter of the typical US overhead utilities and tighter angles forced by the township environment, so it was a new challenge to get something workable (for me).
First up was Centralia, as Richard noted, we arrived as a manifest was trundling through town, we would have caught the front end if it wasn't for a diversion a few miles further back on the road here which cost us several crucial minutes.
That suited me fine as I was after rolling stock photos as well and blitzed a dozen right off the bat. The next real trade was a CN unit, for me a first, never seen a CN on point so that triggered the BSRS (Ball, Stick, Rabbit, Squirrel) mode. One thing not easily sen in Richards views is the monumentally large communications tower in the town.
I wanted that in the shot so opted for the wide cluttered shot. Then followed the 100+ rolling stock images as the consist rolled by.
It wasn't much longer before the loaded coal train rolled out of the north yard and drew to a stand just before the crossing to prevent blocking it, more BSRS mode as I ambled (anything but) up the street for some close ups of the engines and stock.
As is typical in many small American towns, the railroad sits cheek by jowl with the public areas so you can legitimately get really close. The weather was 60% cloud cover and moving reasonably fast so I was bullying the weather gods to get a move on and deliver a sucker hole for my low angle shot with the tower in the back scene, for once it worked, just as the Amtrak train arrived.
For the record it's the 5:08P Illini.
https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/20928/city-of-new-orleans-illini-saluki.pdf
Front end was one of the new Chargers which are phasing out the older Genesis engines, AC drives, light weight and superior traction control means they take off like greyhounds out of the trap.
As soon as he'd come to stand and cleared the double diamonds to the south then the coal train got the go, starting 12-13,000t trains is impressive but standing 10 feet away it even more so. I did get my wider sunny shot with the tower in the background as he throttled up.
There was no time to re position so just snapped away and soaked up the audio and visuals.
I had my new hearing aids in, mainly to stop Richard having to keep repeating himself
![Big Grin :D :D](/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/biggrin.png)
and they have a safety feature that limits audio above 100 Db to prevent further damage, both were triggered and the pair of engines at near full throttle got the train moving. More coal car photos followed until finally the DPU came by pushing hard.
The time stamps on the photos show that it took nine minutes for the whole train to pass the road crossing.
Time stamps also show that the next train was 20 minutes behind, again another BSRS moment, never coped a NS on lead, better yet a almost new AC motor rebuild, for the record a AC44C6M.
Richard was doing his 'thang' with the video so I took the further shot as it rolled out of the yard and headed south before turning east over the diamonds.
The engineer was friendly and gave a little nod and wave as he rolled by, I like that, better than the finger you sometimes get, in fact most crews over the weekend were very friendly.
Trailing unit was a grubby old Dash 9, the pre Tier exhaust has a lovely crisp bark and no doubt it'll soon be passing through NS shops for a rebuild.
There followed more rolling stock photos and then once gone, we headed back for food.
Overall it's a good place with plenty of parking and quite a few angles to work as the sun swings around, further south is a crossing (Calumet Street) which looks to have good access and line of sight over the double diamonds and another (E 13th Street) a few blocks away where the line then spits again.
Photo count - 280