Richard's American Train Adventures

[richard carr]

The first stop in Milwaukee was UPs Butler Yard, located by Harley Davidson Avenue.
There have been sightings of a SP/SSW liveried GP60s there, but nothing that I could see, everything was yellow.

So I moved on to Duplainville, about 20 miles west of Milwaukee, where a CN line crosses a CP line and is reportedly fairly busy.
I was driving around looking at potential parking places, more precisely the lack of them and heard a horn, so turned the car around and saw the back of a train going over the crossing, I could follow it along the road and saw it was a CN local, so I carried on chasing trying to get a head of it.

I soon pulled over and grabbed a few shots.



A GP32-2 and a zebra striped GP40 wide cab, it's not really going down hill, it's just me in a hurry to grab anything.



So I jumped back in the car and headed after it again

I reached a town called Sussex, and saw that the train had slowed to a crawl over a crossing, so I managed to get ahead and pulled intoa nice open space to get some more pictures.



That looks like the conductor throwing a switch.



So the train has pulled into the siding, the building on the left behind the trees is some kind of paper distributor, so the train un coupled the three box cars at the back, pulled forward, then went into the spur by the side of the building, pulled out the empty box car in there.
Then pushed back to pick up the 3 it had just uncoupled, pulled forward then backed intot he spur to drop off the 3 loaded cars.

Then came out onto the siding, clear of the spur switch, reset that then pushed back the train. The locos then uncoupled and went to the north end of the siding, a mainline train went by and once it had passed, they then ran round their train. All this in about an hour.



So the train pulls forward leaving the loaded box cars behind



The train backs into the spur

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

9673 is a nice weathering project

 

[richard carr]

The switching continued until they had put the 3 loaded cars into the spur. Then on the mainline a train of autoracks came through with out much warning.







2 SD70s on the train

By now the local had finished the switching and was waiting to run round it's train






I headed back to the crossing in Duplainville to wait for the train

This came through first



Followed by this, a mixed autorack and container train.


with a KCS ACe in the middle



But there was no sign of the local, the time was getting on so I headed off to Madison, the home of the Wisconsin Southern Railroad.

 

[richard carr]

Sadly nothing was happening in Madison, it was 3:15 on a Friday afternoon and like most shortlines, the week was over. But I did see 4 of these come into land

I then set off for La Cross 140 miles away and about 2 and half hours.

Once I got there I got checked into the hotel, I had spotted a couple of CP GP20 ECOs parked up near the yard so I went in search of them





This is the yard office area, the actual sidings are about half a mile further east just before the tracks cross the the BNSF line as they head into their yard. Nothing was happening so I headed back to the hotel and went to bed early