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Clear Lake June 1st


So then once again the sun is shining, my wife is in the garden and I'm off lineside. I cut the grass in the morning so my garden duties were done. I gave Mrs TS-USA the opportunity of doing something else but she wanted to garden. OK. I'm fine with that. So I hopped into the truck and headed for Clear Lake. I thought I'd try somewhere different for a change. As I approached HWY10 I saw a train headed west. Once onto 10 I caught it fairly easy and I hoped to get to Clear Lake in time to snap a pic. But the traffic lights on 10 put paid to that. So I have another "fishermans tale" 236 axles according to the detector.
Almost as soon as I had found a parking spot lineside I heard a horn and rushed to snap these two magnificent SD70's #9706 and 9539 on a coal train. I don't see enough of the green and grey ones. I really like them. 440 axles on this according to the detector. That makes for 107 coal hoppers behind them. The hoppers are about 53' long according to the manufacturers website that's 5671' - there are 5280 feet in a mile so this train was approaching 1.1 miles long! I'm English that sort of thing amazes me totally. Awesome!
No 9175
After another 10 minutes or so the detector sprang to life and just as it got to the important bit, the axle count, a noisy truck went by drowning that out so as this pair of SD's 8322 and 9161 went by I decided to count the wagons for the heck of it. 114 coal hoppers.
No. 8232
So deciding that this spot was too noisy I moved down the line a tad to get some quiet. Very quickly I was surprised to hear a 12 axle count on the way. I wasn't properly set up and grabbed this shot of ACe 9175 and CITX 140 running light. More on them later.
No. 9175
Then it went quiet. Very quiet. I heard a train given clearance to head from Coon Creek to Staples so I knew something was on the way. What seemed like an age went by. I heard that there was something waiting at MP68 for this upcoming to clear so at least there was something to wait for. Then the batteries went flat on my scanner. I moved again to see if I could find a better shot for the west bound. Eventually I could see it in the distance. As it rounded the curve I got this shot of #5273
No. 5273
Oooh Boy! What a belter of a shot! I won't take a better one than that for a while I don't think. But I didn't have long to gloat as what had been held at MP68 was on its way...
No. 9175 again
9135 and CITX 140 again still with the ACe leading. What was going on? Well thanks to the outstate minnesota group on Yahoo here's what hapenned.
For unknown reasons, the BNSF ran a coal train through Northtown and up the Staples Sub to the Becker Power station. The crew took it up to Becker, where they left it on Main 2. Then they ran up to Saint Cloud, where they turned the locos on the wye (this was why 9135 was still leading). After waiting for the westbound freight they crossed over to Main 1 and ran back to the train at Becker, where there they brought it into the power station to be unloaded.