Western Railroad Discussion > Racing bananas on the UP

Here’s a scenario you don’t often see ‘round these here parts. Racing bananas! Okay… so they weren’t really bananas. They were in reality Union Pacific diesel-electric locomotives. And at the slow-ish speed you couldn’t really say they were actually racing. But that’s my thread title, and I’m stickin’ to it! This sequence reminds me of another time back in November of 2012 involving 2 more bunches of bana…… er, big yellow diesel-electric locomotives.

And boy-howdy, talk about a RACE: ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2922394,2922394#msg-2922394 hee hee hee)

1. Looking east from the Calhoun Bluffs Terrace Rd crossing: Through the trees from US hwy 24 I had spotted an eastbound train out of Topeka. I had to get south of the tracks to get some favorable sunlight. So I raced out to this crossing but didn’t make it before the gates went down. The train was too close to think about just walking to the other side. A routine glance at the signals presented me with an interesting sight. Both signals were showing green! This was a first, in my memory of this location. I took a record ‘grab’ shot of a coal train which was on main #1, the nearest track. Then after about 40 cars I could see train #2, a manifest through train #1. I decided to make a run for to some location further east where I might get both trains in the same shot. And maybe train #2 would gain a little on train #1, which after all was a loaded coal train…

2. Unfortunately their speeds were in perfect sync. At a rural crossing near Newman, KS I got another shot of UP 8828 on the coal train, followed 1 minute later by…

3. …UP 5599 on the manifest. It was a very unusual sight to see 2 trains side by side, in absolutely perfect unison speed-wise!
(3 photos taken February 13, 2019)

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Very NICE catch Lance, great timing!

Larry