I gave 415 a 4:15 departure, meet 409 at East Switch, to the Grove, westbound meet 409 again at Johnson, to Signal 91 and call.

That's not quite right, but I wrote it after midnight and now it's after midnight again and I can't remember exactly what happened. I have a strong memory of some train meeting another twice on the same trip, but I can't remember which.

---

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

Was on the road yesterday and saw a truck with a 250 gal water tank and backhoe on it and on the door was an outline of an AnsaldoBreda P255 on the door. That made me take a more careful look as I hadn't see any RR equipment with such a logo. It had the name of the owner and "Landscape Company, Specializing in RR right of way clearance." So a private business that hires out to do brush clearance for RR's.

Railroads have lots of contractors these days. Including me.

Now for something different ...
https://apnews.com/901ad9a74b71d7f0df68b85a2f2bc435/Union-Pacific's-3Q-profit-grows-6-percent-despite-challenges

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Union Pacific delivered a 6 percent improvement in third-quarter profit even though it hauled 1 percent less freight and dealt with disruptions from Hurricane Harvey.

The Omaha, Nebraska, railroad it earned $1.19 billion, or $1.50 per share, in the third quarter. That’s up from $1.13 billion, or $1.36 per share, a year ago.

Good for my 100 shares.

---

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

Train crashes into sleeping man's bedroom in Atlanta, Georgia

A man sleeping in his bedroom was injured when a freight train came off the tracks in Atlanta, Georgia, sending a carriage smashing into his home.

The derailment, at around 03:00 local time (07:00 GMT) on Thursday, pushed the house off its foundations, and left the unidentified man trapped inside.

"You're sleeping in your bed, and you hear a large rumble and then you hear a large crash," a firefighter said.

The man was rescued and transported to hospital with minor injuries.

Officials have not yet determined what caused the CSX train travelling from Georgia to Ohio to derail in northwest Atlanta.

http://www.dailynews.com/2017/10/26/pedestrian-struck-killed-by-metrolink-train-in-burbank/

The 33-year-old Glendale woman fatally struck Thursday night by a Metrolink train in Burbank was sitting on the railroad tracks even after the train’s engineer sounded his horn, authorities said Friday.

It is unclear why Lydia Savadjian sat on the railroad tracks, Burbank police said.

Savadjian was pronounced dead at 8:20 p.m. Thursday on South Front Street east of Verdugo Avenue, said Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

10/28: Got home from work at 11:30 Friday night, thus overslept a bit, arriving around 10. I'm conductor of the PCC L cars 22 and 41. Motorman informs me someone left the battery switches on and they're both dead, so when he raised the pole and turned on the controls, nothing happened. (There has to be enough power in the batteries to close the relay to start the motor-generator set that converts the 600VDC from the wire to other voltages needed to operate various components of the car, including the battery charger.) He said he'd tried to jump start it with no result. He went back out there and I followed after signing in, finding Deputy Curator Electric opening the drain valves on all the air tanks in his domain to prevent freezing). Motorman was telling him of our problem and it turned out his method of jump starting the car was incorrect. DCE showed us which panel to open to find the switch that directly connects 600 to the MG and how, since it's a 600V switch that you don't really want to have your hand to close to, there's a rope that you hook around the handle and pull it. Once the MG starts, the relay closes and provides an alternate path for the 600, so it's safe to reach in with your hand to open the jump switch. DCE said to let the batteries charge for a while and see what happened when we got to the Tail Track, or we could carefully cheat on the pole changing rules and raise the one before lowering the other (that's standard practice on cars with wood roofs, but if one pole is up and the other comes in contact with a metal roof, it's a direct short and something go foom). We didn't do that. Anyway, Motorman was trained years ago to let the motor blowers run for 15 minutes before starting to move, so he figured that might be enough for the batteries to charge. Lo and behold, when we got to the Tail and changed ends properly, all the circuits picked up, so we were good. A-Sup was Dispatcher and Motorman on 749, and had gotten out of the barn first. He was about to leave and gave us authority out of the Tail, reverse on the Car Line, and into One once he did. The portable stairs we use to board L cars from the ground level platforms had been moved behind the depot for a movie shoot on Tuesday, but DCE was there with a golf cart to bring them back to us. We ran at 12, 2, and 4, never more than half a carful of people, but even that number was surprising given that it was cold, cloudy, and windy, and had rained overnight and early morning with a few snow flurries (or squalls). We eventually reached 42F. After lunch, DCE and his crew started switching out Yard 5, blocking the Car Line and Tail Track, so it was just as well that the operator of 3142 canceled. A-Sup went for one last trip and gave us authority to bed once the way was clear, which it soon was -- DCE is cool that way. They even lined the switches for us. Once we were in the barn, I got out my stepladder to get down from the train and went to turn off the battery switches... discovering that after we'd jumped the one car, we'd never turned on the battery switch in the other car, so now I'm wondering if its batteries got charged. Maybe I'll send DCE an email.

10/29: I signed up for Dispatcher, all the mainline trains being staffed already. As the date approached and nobody signed up for 3142, and when I heard the weather forecast, I thought maybe I'd take out 415 instead and get some practice with it, maybe sneak in a couple of trips on the Main. Well, the scheduled conductor of 4290 saw it as an opportunity to get in some line training on 415 so he can qualify on it, so he and his motorman did that instead of 4290 and I was relegated to riding along on most of their Car Line trips and the last one on the Main. I also rode the last trip on 460, on which A-Sup let his conductor (an old friend of mine) run most of the trip. He was complaining about how the brake stands act just a bit differently than all the other cars, so after changing ends at Jefferson St., I asked if I could take it back to the station, just to experience the front cab, which I'd never operated before (when I was training, that end of the car was always coupled to another car, so I had only ever run it from the other end). I had no trouble with it and he let me take it to the barn as well. Thus endeth the regular operating season. It was sunny and got up to 47F, and all the cars' heat was adequate, once I figured out how to turn it on in 415.

Upcoming: the Snowflake Special charter trip on the CTA on November 12, and then Happy Holiday Railway on the four weekends after (U.S.) Thanksgiving. I haven't signed up for any HHR dates yet, but I might.

---

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

Bernie, if you've been watching the MH camera the last few days, you should have seen new Siemens Chargers on the Quincy trains and Carbondale trains. They're running by themselves now. The other day, I had to drive to Galesburg and on my way back I heard the dispatcher tell 383 someone from Mechanical would meet them at the depot. The next morning, 380 came back to Chicago led by a dirty Canadian Pacific unit. Turned out the Charger's horn was bad.

---

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

Bernie, if you've been watching the MH camera the last few days, you should have seen new Siemens Chargers on the Quincy trains and Carbondale trains.

Well I have not been feeling "with it" recently and have not logged into the cameras for a month. however today I had a look.

Indeed the Chargers are running

The 381 was first out lead by 4616.



The ID numbers a quite small compared with the old P42's

Next up was the 391, reversing out with 4615



Also they are extremely quiet, I could always here the 391 climbing the Airline about 30 seconds before it came into view, I heard nothing today.



Then finally the 380 from Quincy arrived with 4613 leading, and a rather late City of New Orleans on the Airline.



I notice the Chargers are signed "Amtrak Midwest".

PS I will also try to see the 390 later

Bernie, if you've been watching the MH camera the last few days, you should have seen new Siemens Chargers on the Quincy trains and Carbondale trains.

Well I have not been feeling "with it" recently and have not logged into the cameras for a month. however today I had a look.

I notice the Chargers are signed "Amtrak Midwest".

Yes, they were not purchased by and do not belong to Amtrak (although obviously Amtrak had a great deal of input in the design). The reporting mark on them isn't AMTK, it's IDTX (Illinois Department of Transportation, X denoting that the owner is not a railroad). Illinois is handling the purchase on behalf of itself, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and [I'm not sure if the fifth state is Iowa, which doesn't currently have any corridor trains, or Indiana, which reluctantly has one plus all the Michigan trains going through, most without stopping]. California (where they're built) tagged onto the order as well, plus I believe MARC for commuter trains out of Baltimore.

Also, it was made official today that Siemens will build 49 single level coaches for California and 88 for Illinois. This is in place of the Nippon-Sharyo bilevels that were supposed to be built here in Illinois but failed the first crush test. Look for these in about two years.

---

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

The 100yo Hunslet locomotive that could: Train from WWI restored by volunteers at Ipswich

A train once used to deliver supplies on the Western Front during World War I has been fully restored and now calls south-east Queensland home.
Restoring the Hunslet No. 327 locomotive was a labour of love for former train drivers and engineers from the UK and Queensland Rail at The Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich.
The 10-year project included three years of intense labour to bring the 7-tonne train back to its original state.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Another alert for Bernie: METX 194 has come back from being rebuilt. The F40PHM-2 designation has been changed to -3 due to new microprocessor controls installed (to keep emissions under control). It also had the pushbutton/solenoid horn valve replaced with a normal valve physically operated by the engineer. The only real external difference, however, is that it's in Metra's new paint scheme as seen on the last few F40 rebuilds. I did a very quick Google search for pictures of it and came up dry.

---

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

I've also forgotten to mention that Metra put a vinyl wrap on METX 100 for its 40th birthday. The four sides (but not the roof or top of the nose) are in the original RTA colors from before Metra was even created. Very 1970s.

---

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

Another alert for Bernie: METX 194 has come back from being rebuilt. The F40PHM-2 designation has been changed to -3 due to new microprocessor controls installed (to keep emissions under control). It also had the pushbutton/solenoid horn valve replaced with a normal valve physically operated by the engineer. The only real external difference, however, is that it's in Metra's new paint scheme as seen on the last few F40 rebuilds. I did a very quick Google search for pictures of it and came up dry.

Well funny you should mention that.

I have been watching the cams over the past week, however there are now so many it is difficult and time consuming to catch everything, however on the 13th what looked like a freshly liveried 177 and 194 hauled a ragtag assortment of coaches across the highline (seems I didnt get a shot of that) however they then handily reversed past the camera!!



And a close up of 194




Three of the 4 coaches that 177 and 194 were hauling were "Virginia Railway Express"



As to 100, well when I first saw it I thought it looked like it was still undergoing a repaint and was just in primer :-)




Surrounded by a lot of the newer liveried versions it looks a bit "old"

Three of the 4 coaches that 177 and 194 were hauling were "Virginia Railway Express"

Originally Chicago & North Western, transferred to RTA/Metra/something and subsequently sold as surplus. Now the VRE has new cars, so they're surplus again, and Metra is buying them back (for considerably more money) due to increased demand.

Metra's Facebook post about 194

---

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

New Amtrak Cascades locomotives now riding the rails
https://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2017/11/theyre-here-new-amtrak-cascades.html

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Car into bus into train - just bent sheet metal.
http://abc7.com/traffic/train-hits-bus-after-bus-collides-with-car-in-sun-valley/2703006/

Recently I have been watching the rail cameras quite a lot.

There are two main sites I am a member of and recently they have been adding lots of new cameras, there are now 40 cameras across 26 locations, making a quite difficult to manage.

However until yesterday all were in the USA. Then Railstream crossed the border and went "international" I will let you guess where;



Yep, Canada, Belleville Ontario to be precise, and the ubiquitous EMD F40PH-2 of which VIA Rail has 59.

Whilst quite a small town, it is on the VIA Rail main line from Toronto to Ottawa and Montreal.

One really noticeable thing is VIA Rail believe in making their trains stand out.



Yep 906 is a P42 same as Amtrak, but a bit more er colourful!! VIA apparently has 29.

They also do things a little differently, there is a site where you can track the VIA trains and I noticed this morning that trains number 50 and 60 seemed to be approaching Belleville together.

I looked them up on the VIA website and indeed the two services are identical until they split at Brockville, the 50 to Ottawa and the 60 to Montreal, I wondered what this train looked like.



Well a P42 on the front.



And one in the middle



And one on the end!! That's the way to do it!!

I quite like this camera

Illinois Lottery commercial filmed at IRM. Quite the mix of antique and modern. That trash can is not normally there; in fact, I'm not sure we even have any like it. A lot of other props added too. I can't tell if the conductor is one of our people or an actor.

---

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

Illinois Lottery commercial filmed at IRM. Quite the mix of antique and modern. That trash can is not normally there; in fact, I'm not sure we even have any like it. A lot of other props added too. I can't tell if the conductor is one of our people or an actor.

My, age restricted video.

Illinois Lottery commercial filmed at IRM. Quite the mix of antique and modern. That trash can is not normally there; in fact, I'm not sure we even have any like it. A lot of other props added too. I can't tell if the conductor is one of our people or an actor.

My, age restricted video.

Works for me. If I had a kid, I'd rather they be watching porn than buying Lotto tickets ...
lol :)

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http://abc7.com/passengers-stuck-for-hours-on-stranded-metrolink-train-in-sylmar/2736508/

SYLMAR, LOS ANGELES (KABC) --
It was a long night for dozens of passengers after they got stranded on a stalled Metrolink train for hours.

The train broke down in Sylmar shortly after midnight. Authorities said there were mechanical issues.

Firefighters helped evacuate the train full of passengers -- six of them in wheelchairs.

After about two to three hours, MTA buses arrived to take passengers where they needed to go.

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