Western Railroad Discussion > Tulsa Twilight

A family from church I'm close friends with has a little boy, Joshua, that loves trains.  He's been my train sidekick for quite some time, and I've fed his growing addiction with a subscription to TRAINS, and buying train books for him when I find them cheaply enough.  In Sunday school teacher meeting he always sits beside me, as he knows I already have my laptop open so he can look at train pics. (Side note: if you have any books you'd like to donate to his small but well-read library please PM me and I'll gladly buy them!)

Yesterday he and I had a blast chasing trains together.  After picking him up we made the obligatory stop at Quick Trip for a slushy (it was a suicide with all of the blue-colored freeze flavors mixed togerther: utterly gross) and TWO bags of cheddar potato chips, not one like his mom told me he could have.  I introduced him to the scanner so we could hear the railroad chatter, and hearing the local 466 at Tiger siding, we headed east.  First shot was with the sun near the horizon of a perfectly clean set of SD60's switching the cement plant.  Then we drove to East Tiger for a lesson on signal indications and what that means for impending train action.  With nothing but dark signals, except for the siding signals which were red (yes, I had to explain to him why those were illumnated), we headed for Cherokee Yard.  Continuing our indoctrination into signals, we drove around the wye that connects to the Avard Sub.  That flashing red-over-red guarding the yard lead took some explaining but he quickly understood.  Joshua spotted a high green for an eastward move on Main 1, so we headed for a favorite spot a few miles east that I've use for years for senior portraits, an old and decrepit metal building that's right beside the mains.  The first train by was the eastbound he had seen the signal for, which I'm guessing was the TULMEM.  I told Joshua to wave to the crew and the engineer was kind enough to give us a couple of toots on the horn and the conductor a big friendly wave.  Joshua jumped when the horn he clearly was not expecting... sounded!  We finished our day with a westound stack train, nearly all empty OOCL containers, and this led to our final discussion of the day, why all those containers were the same, why they were empty, where were they going, and why a train SO long could have only two engines.  More railroading to come for this little guy.

1.  The Port Local, aka 93466, switches the Central Plains Cement plant at West Tiger.    I'd kind of hoped to catch him moving further east and a glint shot, but the scanner made it clear he'd be switching cement hoppers for longer than we cared to wait.
2. East Tulsa near Lewis Ave.  Unobstructed views east and west, and if you need a place for urban grunge pics, look no further!  I'm guessing this is the TULMEM.
3. The meet!  Same place as before but 180 degrees east. No idea what symbol this train had.
4. For all intents and purposes it was essentially dark by now, but the miracle of high ISO makes pics like these easy to make.  Its crazy how much different the last two shots are with the only difference being the engineer turning the headlight on bright after passing the eastbound.  By this time Joshua's eight year old appetite had gone into overdrive so it was time to head to the depot to investigate what Mrs Palmer had made us hungry railfans for supper.
 



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/18 19:23 by ATSF5669.

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Final pic.

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Image 2 is fantastic! Narrow shot with that classic purple tinge. Great story to go along too - Reminds me of my grandpa showing me the TRAINS hobby in the early 90s. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/18 20:17 by SCUfoamer.

Photo 1 gets my vote.
ALLEN

Really like #2 Jerry.... Nice work!

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

Love 2 & 3

Congrats on IOTD!

TexasRocket Wrote:
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> Congrats on IOTD!

Ditto! - Nice work!

BB

As you were at the beginning, you continue to be my inspiration in pushing the ISO envelope. Nice stuff, Jerry! And the well-deserved IOTD is no surprise...

Lance

Sounds like to me you had a perfect day,with good images to boot.I used to do the same thing with my sons and two of them ended up railraoders and very good ones.Bill Webb