Ahhh... Valentines
day. Mrs TS-USA and I went up to Duluth to celebrate. A nice lakefront
hotel and gorgeous weather what could be better? OK; the word gorgeous
is relative but as the previous weeks have seen temps below 0 degrees F
for many days. Days in the 20's are gorgeous. So to the trip. We
arrived in Duluth just in time for lunch. The sun was out and there was
some beautiful blue skies to be seen. We still had a good couple of
hours to kill before we could check in so I hopefully suggested taking
a drive down to Oliver, WI to see the Oliver Bridge. For those who
don't know. The Oliver bridge is a double decked road and rail bridge
built in 1916. I thought it would be quite interesting to see and to my
surprise my wife agreed. I pulled out the map and found the easiest
route. As we headed there we crossed many railroad tracks and as I
looked around I saw this. A CN ES44AC just waiting around with nothing
to do. Just look at that trackwork in front of it.
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There was
nothing else about even though this looked to be a sizeable yard. So we
drove on towards the town of Oliver. The Bridge is quite an interesting
sight. You can read some basics here. We drove
around looking for a good place to take a photograph of the structure
but the location is not too conducive to getting a picture. Then I
looked to my right and saw a train moving! I said to my wife we should
try to get a picture of it crossing the bridge. She swung the car
around and we headed back the way we came, through Duluth and out to
the Bridge. Alas, the train had too much of a jump on us. As we chased
along the bridge underneath the train it was pretty cool hearing the
train rattle above us. So we didn't get a picture of a train on the
bridge but this is what we were chasing. A pair of CN ES44's 2634 and
2717 an ex-Illinios Central unit.
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Never mind
that we missed getting a picture. Even my wife admitted that it was
pretty cool driving along the bridge underneath the rumbling train.
After that we drove about looking for a place to get a decent shot of
the structure. It wasn't very easy this is about the best I could do. I
am really drawn to these old rusting bridges that seem to be all over
the Duluth/Superior area.
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With that it
was off to the hotel to check in. I didn't know if I'd see anything
else this weekend. I was quite happy with the sound of the train
rumbling above us. But there was to be more on this weekend click on
the Bashers blog logo at the top of the page to be taken to the
February index to check out more.
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