How times have
changed. May last
year was when I was starting to get keen on Trainspotting again. The
railroads were busy and there was always lots to see. Now things are
different. Locos stand idle, cars have been put into storage and trains
are less. This trip out to Northrtown yard was a perfect example of
that. It was 12 months ago now that I first went out to Northtown. It
was very busy with switchers shuttling about and a couple of through
freights coming passing by. Not so this time as the fist thing that
struck me as I crossed the bridge over the yard was the huge amount of
locos just stood doing nothing.
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Everywhere you looked
there was
loco after loco, doing nothing. Last year when I was there I could see
a line of green Geeps waiting to be returned to their leasing company.
But here now were I don't know how many locos stood idle carrying BNSF
reporting marks. Geeps, SD's, you name it it's probably stood idle
here.
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It was really quite
depressing.
I thought I was going to have to cheat and make it look like things
were hapenning. Like with this shot of a pair of SD 75's, apart from
the fact the lights are off there's nothing to give away that fact that
they are idle. They could just be waiting to be given a warrant to head
out onto the Staples sub...
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Then joy of joys. I
head the
rumble of loco engines and a pair of UP Geeps passed though the scene.
Even so this was only a short freight working. Still it was better than
nothing.
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Still all was not lost there was
some activity in the yard. The yard switchers were scooting about here
and there. But really still not a lot of activity.
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With that I decided
to make a
move to another part of town. But an accident on 169 put paid to that
and with time running short I decided to take a look at Plymouth
industrial park over on I-494 to see if the local switcher was working
there. With luck it was. The crew were waiting to head back to
Northtown with just a couple of cars.
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There you go
slim pickings on
this day May is turning into a bust as well as April.
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