I think you are right David, the one in the middle is a slug, not a calf.

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Taking a more-awake look at it, it would appear that 7273 can attach to a slug at the front end as well as the rear. Those big cables are not standard.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Taking a more-awake look at it, it would appear that 7273 can attach to a slug at the front end as well as the rear. Those big cables are not standard.

Makes sense for a yard shifter, especially in this yard. This is the new style Canadian yard, probably 20 miles long and includes several sawmills, refineries, and large loading docks. It is moving heavy loads in all directions.

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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/26/5-killed-when-amtrak-train-hits-van-in-colorado.html?intcmp=hplnws

Five people were killed when an Amtrak train hit a van Sunday in Colorado, state police said.

Colorado State Patrol said the crash happened around 10 a.m. in Las Animas County.

A juvenile girl was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo., Fox 31 reported.

Amtrak told the television station there were 286 passengers on the train, but no crew or passengers were injured.

State troopers said they were not sure if the van was moving or stationary on the tracks when it was struck by the train.

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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/26/5-killed-when-amtrak-train-hits-van-in-colorado.html?intcmp=hplnws

Five people were killed when an Amtrak train hit a van Sunday in Colorado, state police said.

Colorado State Patrol said the crash happened around 10 a.m. in Las Animas County.

A juvenile girl was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo., Fox 31 reported.

Amtrak told the television station there were 286 passengers on the train, but no crew or passengers were injured.

State troopers said they were not sure if the van was moving or stationary on the tracks when it was struck by the train.

Either way, it shouldn't have been. The driver killed himself and all the passengers.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Bernie! (and anyone else who's interested) UP is cutting in their new signals and removing the old ones at Rochelle today. You can see some of the work, but not a lot of trains, on the web cams.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Bernie! (and anyone else who's interested) UP is cutting in their new signals and removing the old ones at Rochelle today. You can see some of the work, but not a lot of trains, on the web cams.

Well unfortunately the Railstream site has been down since Sunday afternoon, apparently a power outage has done something nasty to the server and the site owner left for a two week European trip on Thursday.

I know there is a free cam at Rochelle, but it is not quite the same.

And they want my email address!!

Having needed some distractions of late and having no cams I have been looking at the "opposition", a site called "Virtual Railfan" which has 9 cams in various places. The first I found was Thomasville North Carolina, this has a few nasty grey Amtraks, Notably the 79/80 Carolinian/Piedmont NY to Charlotte NC




Quality not quite as good a Railstream, the Crescent, NY to New Orleans also comes through here but in the dark and the cams are just not up to that !!

Also on this route is the North Carolina DOT service from Charlotte to Raleigh which while seeming to be an Amtrak service really isn't.



Two F59PH-I's like this and 4 F59PH's (of which I have yet to get a good shot, the crossing gates a just too far away to hear and they come through at speed)

However the best camera scenic wise is this



Cajon Pass CA.
They run long trains here 130+ cars seems the norm, and this is a "dual cam" so you get to see the other direction.

Three on the front and two on the back.



Mostly BNSF freight here but apparently the Southwest Chief 3 and 4 pass this way, but have yet to see them.

Another Amtrak cam is the one at Folkston GA which has the NY to Florida trains The Silver Service/Palmetto this was the hour late 97 today



There is another camera in Fort Worth TX but I haven't had a chance to watch that yet

Hopefully these will keep me busy till Railstream returns

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Bernie! (and anyone else who's interested) UP is cutting in their new signals and removing the old ones at Rochelle today. You can see some of the work, but not a lot of trains, on the web cams.

Well unfortunately the Railstream site has been down since Sunday afternoon, apparently a power outage has done something nasty to the server and the site owner left for a two week European trip on Thursday.

I know there is a free cam at Rochelle, but it is not quite the same.

And they want my email address!!

That would be the Trains Magazine cam. They will send you a few emails about their various magazines, but they're not too obnoxious and I don't think they'll sell your address to anyone else.

If you had been watching in the last hour or so, you would have seen me wandering around for a few minutes to shoot a BNSF train.

UP's foreman is talking trains through the limits of the signal suspension, which takes three separate sets of permission per train (more if they let the train approach the diamond while BNSF is going across). Part of that is to tell them that all the crossings are flagged and they don't have to stop and protect them.

BNSF has a signal supervisor talking to the UP foreman and to the C&I dispatcher. The dispatcher has to talk each train by at least three separate Control Points, each of them "after stopping, BNSF xxxx has authority to pass the signal displaying Stop indication at..."

I'll comment on your pictures when I'm at home and not using the data on my phone.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

I might have watched on Railstream, but got totally absorbed in the new cams and trying to work out exactly what trains I could see and when.

Which is one of the reason I am still up, apart from waiting for the 382 at Galesburg, so I could fill in at least one blank space. I discovered I could see the "unusual" which is always good.

Here passing through Folkston GA a glimpse of the longest train that Amtrak run.



Now most long distance trains run between 8-10 cars. As you can see this has a few more. In fact 15 superliners, but there was more.



Yes 24 autoracks!! Meaning this is the "Auto Train" runs from Lorton Virgina to Stanford Florida, basically let you take your car to Florida, by train, handy if you live in Washington :-)

I also managed to get a half decent shot of one of the North Carolina F59PH's 1869 to be precise.

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Well to continue to bore those of you who don't like blue and silver trains, this next picture is one I have been hoping for, for a while.

All the Railstream cams are in towns and cities, where for instance you can watch the Southwest Chief leave Chicago, however till today I have never seen this.



The Southwest Chief that left Chicago 2 days ago in the Cajon Pass CA, over 2,100 miles travelled about 120 to go. Passengers get a pretty good view.

Contrast that with this.



Where in the world!! Well, the Lone-star State, Fort Worth Texas, where if you look to the right you can just see #142 pulling the Texas Eagle 21(29) towards San Antonio, with tower 55 behind.

This is actually a very busy crossing with 4 lines crossing at grade (that means on the same level apparently), and with the traffic whizzing past above it looks like a perpetual motion machine.

Apparently the camera is mounted on the Morrison Supply Companies building.

As for Railstream, well the site is back but none of the camera work yet.

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I'm surprised to see Auto Train in Georgia in daylight. I thought it ran through there overnight.

The North Carolina service is Amtrak in the same way the Hoosier State is. Amtrak handles reservations and ticketing, and provides operating crews. The only difference is that the state owns and maintains the trains, whereas Indiana contracts that part out to IPH.

[edit]

Where in the world!! Well, the Lone-star State, Fort Worth Texas, where if you look to the right you can just see #142 pulling the Texas Eagle 21(29) towards San Antonio, with tower 55 behind.

This is actually a very busy crossing with 4 lines crossing at grade (that means on the same level apparently), and with the traffic whizzing past above it looks like a perpetual motion machine.

Tower 55 is one of the busiest rail junctions in the US. Yes, at grade means all the tracks are on the same level. Until a few months ago, Amtrak had to make a reverse move through it daily. Finally, a deal was reached for Amtrak to use the tracks of Trinity Rail Express (the commuter line, former Rock Island) between there and Dallas, instead of UP.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Where in the world!! Well, the Lone-star State, Fort Worth Texas, where if you look to the right you can just see #142 pulling the Texas Eagle 21(29) towards San Antonio, with tower 55 behind.

This is actually a very busy crossing with 4 lines crossing at grade (that means on the same level apparently), and with the traffic whizzing past above it looks like a perpetual motion machine.

Apparently the camera is mounted on the Morrison Supply Companies building.

As for Railstream, well the site is back but none of the camera work yet.

Not too far from where I lived in Fort Worth some years back.

MAP: Morrison Supply Co (311 E Vickery Blvd, Fort Worth, TX 76104) and just to the NorthWest a bit is the "Fort Worth T&P Station" (MAP). This is where Amtrak has there main depot in town and most of the buses in town also start/end their routes there.

If you look at the map I linked to above for the supply company you will see the grade crossing has a total of 5 lines total - three lines going just about North/South and two lines going just about East/West at grade.

Several miles to the South/South-West is the Davidson Yard. It is a very big and busy yard.
(MAP: Union Pacific - Davidson Yard).

Link to some history of the yard when they did some upgrades a few years back to the fiber optics.

A picture overlooking the Davidson Yard (credit "kinchloe" on Flicker). Gives you an idea how large it is.

Here is a short story one of our local TV stations did during the Summer 2012 heat wave we had....

... Now add 30 to 35 degrees to that number (depending on the wind direction) and you will have the daytime temperature at the Fort Worth train yard.

That’s right. When it was 108-degrees at the airport, that afternoon it was 138-degrees in the “bowl” as they call it, the center of the yard where they cull and separate out the freight cars.

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Independence Day weekend is traditionally when the museum has its trolley pageant. In the last couple of years, however, they have learned that the visiting public is not fond of stopping everything for an hour-plus-long parade of equipment. Instead, a lot of different things rotate into and out of service throughout the day, things which don't often run.

Saturday, I'm conductor on the caboose train, pulled (and pushed) by Wisconsin Electric Power L4, an electric freight locomotive. L4 works at 70 lbs. in the brake pipe, not 90, which I've never done before.

Sunday is the 59th anniversary of the Chicago Aurora & Elgin abandoning passenger service, at 12:15 p.m. We will recreate this by having a CA&E train discharge its passengers at Seeman Road, where they will be picked up by a North Shore train. In the afternoon, I will be conductor on the 6-car L train, with the 2000s, 2200s, and 2400.

Monday I will be in the tower again as student dispatcher. My day won't be as hectic as the Saturday student's, and he's being taught by the Superintendent.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Mention of the tower made me look up a local one, now closed, just a couple miles from work. You real train buffs might get a chuckle out of this story.
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,2969251
Oh note it mentions the Los Angeles Junction Railway. That is one busy RR. The amount of piggyback and inter-modal going through to/from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is staggering. Bernie sees some of it on the Cajon cam but there are several other main lines out of the Los Angeles area.

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Just a reminder that not all engines are grey in North America. My daughter used to live about 5 blocks from the Denver yard, a great place for train spotting.

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Leadhills and Wanlockhead Railway in south Scotland 'Replacement' train offer as road shuts.

And colourful too.

Now that would be a cool commute.

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I'm not sure when they took that photo as every time I've been to Leadhills it has either been tipping it down or thick for (or more probably low cloud)...

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

http://www.ksat.com/news/train-derails-in-southwest-bexar-county

Train derailment causes 1,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide to spill in SW Bexar County
Multiple cars went off tracks

SAN ANTONIO - A train derailed in Southwest Bexar County Sunday afternoon.

The incident was reported around 4 p.m.

The Bexar County Sheriff's Office said the train was carrying 60,000 gallons of sodium hydroxid, a caustic substance. It is believed approximately 1,000 gallons spilt as a result of the derailment.

Multiple first responders from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Sheriff's Office, Somerset Fire Department and Union Pacific responded to the scene along Fischer and Quintana roads.

That is in an industrial area just southwest of Loop 410 and Interstate 35.

Nearby Traders Village was evacuated until the area was deemed safe.

An environmental group has been placed in charge of cleaning up the area. The cause of the derailment remains under investigation.

About 2 miles from where a good friend lives. Fortunately won't cause him issues, he is half way around the world on vacation.

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Cute. Wonder what the gauge would be, 24"?

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