Western Railroad Discussion > An SP unit Where You Would Not Expect One

A bit of a surprise for a very slow day on the BNSF Franklin Canyon area (Stockton Sub,Northern CA).

I dropped my daughter off at school by 0815 then headed out to see if I could find something. About 0850, I heard the BNSF Disp talking to a westbound train at Mariposa. The train would follow Amtrak 711 out of Mariposa. Had to be one of the Z9's. I had over an hour to kill, so I drove up by Mare Island. The Mare Island Rail was all tied down, but I did find the ex-Santa Fe passenger car "Tolani" parked on the wrong end of the bridge in Vallejo. Not sure if it was headed in or out, but if it stays there too long, the fluted steel panels will end up in a recycling yard!

Just about 1030, the Z9 (probably a ALTNBY) came through Collier with four unremarkable orange units. I went to get something to eat and was going to follow the train down to the Richmond yard, but ended up changing my mind. It was so quiet on the radio (just a couple yard jobs), no O-11 or maintenance people out that would help generate some radio traffic about approaching trains, I decided to head east back to Christie, in case another westbound slipped through. The only thing of interest I heard was Job 107 arriving at Richmond from Oakland. They were instructed to pick up a BNSF locomotive off of a yard track that was coupled to an Amtrak locomotive and bring it to the roundhouse. Guess I went the wrong direction.

I sat out there at Christie until 1230 and pretty much gave up. I slowly drove home and as soon as I pulled into my drive-way I heard the eastbound vehicle train power coming out of the house at Richmond. I had stuff to do at home and contemplated skipping the train. I finally decided that other stuff could wait and I would head back out to catch this one more train at Christie, as the weather was cool, but beautiful. I waited until he got his track warrant to leave Richmond and I headed back. I left in such a hurry, I forgot my scanner in the house. I beat the train to Christie by about 15 minutes. When it appeared from around the corner about a 1/2 mile away, I could see the 2nd unit was a dark color that I could not make out, followed by a yellow UP unit and 3 more BNSF H2's (The rear 3 were going to be set out in Stockton). As the train approached, I could make out the red nose and I could not believe that an SP patched unit was on this BNSF train! Beautiful sight. I have hundreds of older slides of SP units that had matching paint jobs (paint decomposition that is). I thought it always gave SP units character.

I headed home happy that I had bothered to go back out for one more train!

while I am at it, on Wednesday, I had left work a couple hours early and headed home via Richmond. As I got close to Richmond, I heard an eastbound get a track warrant to leave. Turned out to be an eastbound stack train with several stack sets of marine containers followed by a train of empty pig flats. I shot the train at Collier under grey misty skies.

Photo #1 & 2: 12/07/12 1405 hours @ Christie, CA - BNSF 4955 East (VRICKCK) with SP 6150, UP 3811, BNSF 5161, 4326 & 4757. What a difference a few weeks of rain will do. The hills are turning green again!

Photo #3: 12/05/12 1518 hours at Collier, eastbound BNSF 7544 & 5130

Thanks for looking,

Gary

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Nice photos and description of events. Always cool to see Southern Pacific painted units on non Union Pacific lines.

SantaFeRuss

Nice shots, my lawn in near winter Nebraska is almost that green (gonna pay for that sooner or later), anyway,
BNSF Sioux City sub has seen both UP and SP units in consist and in fact a UP unit as the DPU remote.