Racetrack: Starbucks and Gilbert Park

On November 20th, I tried railfanning from the Starbucks that is right across the street from the tracks. Unfortunately, it is on the north side of the tracks. When the sun is out, not only am I getting the dark side of the train, I was getting glare on the windows. But even though the pictures are bad by railfan standards, the information they record is the same as good pictures in terms of train times and types of engines and freight cars. The next day I checked out Gilbert Park as a viewing location.  My conclusion is that Gilbert Park is a better view, but I can't work on the blog while I sit there. So I still have to give this railfan location issue some thought.

I saw four mixed freights, but got pictures of all the cars in only 3 of them. A summary of the mixed freights is:

A      B     C 3-bay 4 11 6 4-bay 15 5 5-bay 1 1 tank 2 25 5 Hi-cube box box 6 3 refer 13 high gon 6 gondola 10 1 coil 2 lumber 1 28 bulkhead flat 3 22 59 67 November 20, 2014 (Update: all of the pictures I took to and from Starbucks are posted.) 20141120-21 0001 As I left my house, looking down Main I could see that there was a westbound commuter leaving the station. By the time I got my camera out of the case, etc., it was long gone. But I took a picture anyhow to get a time stamp. before 09:50am: westbound commuter. 09:54am: eastbound commuter, Metra 209. This train arrived as I approached Starbucks. In addition to the obvious reason of warmth, one reason for taking pictures from inside Starbucks is that train watching doesn't cost me "blog time." In fact, it forces me to work on the blog :-) Since someone gave me a gift card to Starbucks, I also have plenty to drink and eat. I took a picture of my "train watching office" to document the sun screen I was setting behind. For most of the trains, I had enough of a heads up that I would step to the left and take the pictures through a window that did not have the sunscreen. But since I could not hear the crossing gates, some of the trains caught me by surprise. Sometimes I would hear diesel engines and barely have enough time to grab the camera. And I may have missed the Pepperidge Farm local because it would have been quiet and short. 10:13am: eastbound Illinois Zephyr. In fact, it was this first train that taught me that I will not get a "heads up" that a train is coming because I can't hear the crossing gates. That is why you see the sunscreen and why the locomotive is east of where I wanted to catch the locomotive. This train zoomed through town rather quickly. It should be on time for its scheduled arrival at Chicago of 10:40am. 10:26am: eastbound Magnetation ore train, BNSF 8858 (SD70MAC) NS 8069 (ES44AC) DPU: BNSF 6714 (ES44C4). 10:29:50am: false gate closing that lasted for 50 seconds. 10:54:18am: eastbound commuter, Metra 197. Left at 10:55:40am. 11:00am: eastbound mixed freight A, BNSF 7222 (ES44DC) 4427 (Dash 9-44CW). This train was moving remarkably slow. It looked more like the IHB than the racetrack. The following pictures are spaced 2 seconds apart, so it took a couple of seconds to move the length of a locomotive. Sometimes I see slow engine speeds because trains are now parked just a few blocks west of here since the Belmont underpass was constructed. But if that was the case, the speed of the train would increase as it went past. This train remained slow. And it was not underpowered. In fact, it had two relatively modern engines pulling just 14 cars! Because this train was short and because the mix of cars was unusual, I'm listing them all. The unusual aspect of this train is that it was mostly gondolas, including some high-wall gons. High-wall gons normally occur only in unit coal trains. And they normally have a yellow strip on one end to indicate the location of the rotary coupler. So I did some research on the MLMX reporting mark (Googled "MLMX freight"). From freight.railfan.ca I learned that it is a rotary gondola that is owned by Metal Management Inc. And some pictures, especially one from freightcars.midatlanticrr.com, indicate that high-walled gondolas are used to carry scrap metal as well as coal. And a search of the ARR type J301 produced a page of thumbnail pictures. Unfortunately, I cannot recreate the link that produced those search results. That page had quite a few cars with a white stripe on one end. So the cars are evidently built with and without rotary couplers. Another search allowed me to find MLMX 410. This is the first time I've come across a lot of evidence that not all railfans do just pretty pictures of engines. In the following list of the cars, "high" means the above described high wall gondola, "gon" means the standard low-wall gondola, and 3-bay means a 3-bay covered hopper. 7222 4427 high low low 4*high 2*3-bay low(see below) 3-bay low 2*tank 2*low high 3-bay 4*low Below is the only visible load. I included some of the covered hoppers on each side for scale. This would be an easy load for a model railroader to recreate. The tank cars were ACFX 20000 and GATX 4314, and I did some research to try to find out what kind of product they were carrying. But about the only thing I learned is that ACFX is now owned by GE Leasing. I wanted to confirm they were carrying harmless cargo since they don't have safety shields on the ends. But I still don't know how to determine what cargo a tank car is carrying. 11:01:32am: delayed opening of gates. Specifically, the gates remained down for almost 2 minutes after the above mixed freight had cleared the road. And it was not because another train was coming. The next train came through about 8 minutes later. 11:11am:  eastbound unit tank-car train, BNSF 8219 (ES44C4) NS 2634 (SD70M)  8815 (C40-9). This train was unusual because it was a mix of white and black tank cars. But a rather extensive sampling of the cars indicated that they had half-height safety shields on the ends. Below are a couple of samplings to show how mixed up the colors were. And to illustrate another reason why I need to avoid sunny days for doing Starbucks train watching. 11:22am: westbound commuter. 11:24am: eastbound hi-rail truck. He had to wait a while for a "hole" to develop in the Main Street traffic so that he could cross. 11:27am: eastbound stacks and pigs, BNSF 5250 (Dash 9-44CW) 4136 (Dash 9-44CW). Both engines had the old paint scheme. Quite a few J B Hunt and Swift containers. Only one little UPS trailer. 11:39am: westbound mixed freight B, CN 2305 (ES44DC) BNSF ??07 (old BNSF paint scheme) 1459 (SD60M, really old paint scheme, see below), CIT 6001 (SD60, ex-SOO, see below). I think the BN and CIT were freight rather than active engines. This mixed-freight train was also moving slow. This train not only had a BN engine, but a block of 3 BN covered hoppers. 11:58am: westbound stacks and pigs, 6 BNSF and 1 NS engine. This train caught me by surprise. By the time I heard the engines and grabbed the camera, the first engine was right in front of me. Unfortunately, the sunscreen was also right in front of me and the sun had moved and now the sunscreen made the pictures unusable. And this freight was going so fast that I did not have a chance to step aside to the window without a sunscreen. So as Murphy's Law would have it, this train had a lot of engines, each with a bad picture. I include just one of the pictures to record how bad the sunscreen can be. Of note, all of the J B Hunt containers were in a block near the front. There were no UPS trailers. 12:08pm: westbound tank-car unit train, BNSF 1020 (C44-9W) NS 9119 (C44-9W). The sunscreen was not the only reason for bad pictures. The sun was at an angle that caused glare off each of the cars. The camera is pretty good about adjusting for backlit issues, but the cars create a "foreground lit" issue. 12:49pm: westbound unit coal train, BNSF 6234 (ES44C4) 9987 (SD70MAC). 12:51pm: eastbound commuter. Because of the bad angle of the sun and the long wait from 12:08 to 12:49, I called it quits for the day. November 21, 2014. When I was taking some more pictures of the Belmont underpass, I heard the following train. It had two engines, but by the time I got the camera ready, I caught just the second unit. 10:12am: eastbound tank-car unit train, BNSF ???? 7829 ES44DC. 20141120-21 0134c The cars did not have safety head shields. And then I went to Gilbert Park to check out that location for railfanning. Since it is after the baseball season, the parking lot by the ball diamond should be empty. The village has put a gate across Walnut Avenue to block access to Railroad Avenue so Gilbert Park is the only assessable location I know of that gives me a clear shot of the south (sunny) side of train. Unfortunately, the parking lot was not empty. Someone was running a mower over the grass. I avoiding the phrase of "mowing the lawn" because in late November, the grass was already short. The only justification I could come up with for out taxpayers money paying for that mowing is that he was mulching the few remaining leaves that had fallen. 10:33am: eastbound Illinois Zephyr. Since the schedule indicates it will arrive in Union Station at 10:40am, it is running late. Fortunately, the "mowing" finally finished and left. 10:41am: eastbound mixed freight C, BNSF 6912 (ES44C4) CITIRAIL (CREX) 1429 (ES44AC). I was able to take pictures of 5 cars at a time, so it was easy to photograph all of the cars in the train. The summary is near the beginning of this post. I include one of the photos outcropped to record the view I was getting. Unlike the Starbucks photos, it is easy to count the bays of a covered hopper with this view. I was able to take pictures of 5 cars at a time, so it was easy to photograph all of them. The summary is near the beginning of this post. The newer looking box cars and refers I saw are described in New Freight Car Designs. Wisconsin Central is now a "fallen flag." Wisconsin Central is now a "fallen flag." 10:55am: eastbound commuter. I then left Gilbert Park to get some more pictures of the Belmont underpass. 11:33am:  westbound commuter. And when I was done with Belmont and while waiting for the stop light at Prairie, I saw a train in my rear view mirror so I circled back to Warren Avenue. before 11:38am: westbound mixed freight. Judging from the cars I did catch, it was a rather typical mix of covered hopper, tank, and box cars.