Western Railroad Discussion > Culmination of a Donner Disappearing Act

After screwing around photographing trains for a couple of hours on the morning of Sunday, June 15th on Donner, I finally made it to the hardware and grocery stores. I was ready to head back up the hill to Donner Summit when I was tipped off to another eastbound train. One more couldn't hurt, right?

Photo 1: UP 8799 leads an eastbound train slowly downgrade through Truckee. Things were a little atypical this particular morning, as eastbound trains were running Main 2, and westbound trains were running Main 1. While the CBS/ABS signals allow for running either direction on either track, the typical operation continues to be left hand running on this stretch of railroad.
Photo 2 and Video: I was planning on continuing the get shots of 8799 and its train, but a thundering sound quickly built up over my shoulder as the eastbound train approached my location. UP 7964 was on point of the westbound ICBOA running up the hill. The ICBOA slowed with the approach signal at the end of the 111 track. There was a lot of MOW work going on around Truckee and CP RV205 West Truckee, and I don't know if the ICBOA was crossing over to Main 2 behind the manifest once it cleared. While I wish I would have been more prepared for a meet to be able to shoot the eastbound over the stacks, the sound of a train climbing Donner made things fine by me. The DPU meet timing worked out nicely as well. I'm guessing that there also was MOW work behind me, or Amtrak 5 was coming up from Reno on Main 2, as the eastbound manifest stopped at CP RV208 East Truckee before the rear of the train passed my location. (Note: I sped up parts of the video to allow for inclusion of the entire train within the time and file size limits.)

I considered hanging around a little longer to wait for Amtrak and to see what else was running, but I had been gone nearly four hours and had perishable food on ice packs in a cooler in a quickly heating car.

Cheers,
Sean

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Nice. the meet with the DPs was perfectly timed.

Great video!
Wish the SD70ACE horn was blown.
Regards, Jim Evans