Day 13: Flagstaff

(Ok I've gotten a little behind on the updates…)

Another cold and gray day in Flagstaff. Started off fairly good, just a bit of high cloud. Went down to Maine again to try and get a repeat of yesterday, but very little was happening. I could hear on the radio that a train was just up the road a bit at Bellemont with DPU problems, seems the front half of the train wasn't talking to the rear. Once they got it all set up again they did something called the "bump test", where the rear locos are told to go forward and depending on which way the train lurches they can see whether the locos are operating in the correct direction or not. It's something I'm familiar with on my model railway, so to see it being done in the real world too was funny.

Strolled down beside the tracks in the snow for a bit to see if there was much around the corner. Caught this EB flying past…

And then eventually the guy who had been getting tech support came around the corner and stopped for a crew change.

While he was stopped another WB overtook him on the other track and was doing every bit of line speed (which is generally 60mph or so). These trains sure can move! No photo, he was going too fast and I was on the shady side anyway.

While walking back I found a huge semi-frozen lake and thought a reflection shot would be cool, if only a WB would come past. And like magic, a WB rounded the curve and roared past!

After this everything died down so I went back over to the other side of the hill and filmed a few trains as Cosnino Rd.

After a brief flurry of activity things completely died off, so I sat in my car for a bit. An hour or so later and the weather had really clouded over and turned cold, when I heard the defect detector broadcast a couple of 0 axle trains in rapid succession. As I pondered, 3 highrailers came around the corner – great, no wonder nothing had been happening, the works dept had been doing some maintenance.

As I sat in my car and watched the lead guy pulled to stop and started making hand symbols at me; I thought maybe he was asking if I was stuck or something, but couldn't decipher it so wound down my window, but was still far enough away I couldn't hear him, so walked over. His message was pretty basic: "You need to leave right now !". I had no idea why, I thought maybe he thought I was blocking the road or something, but no it seems the road I was on (marked on all my maps too) is a private BNSF road and even though I was in no ones way and not causing any harm, he told me that he was reporting me straight away, all before I even had a chance to get back to my car and drive off. I was pretty annoyed and upset about this, obviously I wasn't trying to trespass and had no idea I was in fact, but what really got me was the way he radioed me in to HQ complete with my license plate, before I'd even had a chance to leave!

I drove the couple of hundred metres out to the public road and pulled over, and while he was going across the crossing a local screamed around the corner and veered off down the exact same road I'd been on, and of course he did nothing. So Mr Railfan, sitting well off the maintenance road in his car = bad, Mr Local, hooning down the entire road = fine???

After he'd left the couple of contractors who he'd been escorting came over and had a chat with me, they said that as soon as they saw him slow down they knew he was going to dig his claws into me. Apparently this particular worker has a bit of an attitude and he drives the contractors up the wall, the one week a year they spend with him is more than enough. So that cheered me up a bit.

After that I went to watch the local for a bit; the crew had been told to look out for a blue Ford Explorer and when they saw mine they said to each other on the local channel that that must be the car, but didn't bother reporting anything. After a while I went back to the motel and watched a movie. Trains traffic had been light and then I'd been chewed up, so wasn't in a mood to do much else. Made the decision fairly quickly that I'd head West the next morning.