Passenger Trains > Charging across the Sante Fe

Train 933 departed LaJunta,CO with SC44s testing yesterday. Isolated P42s all day. Couldn't hear the Chargers running. Super quiet.
Nearing Simpson,CO on the former ATSF Raton sub.
West of Model,CO some trees!! at the slow curves before Hoehne.

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Jansen
West of Starkvile

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Gallinas, just after the going away shot the sanders started in a cloud on the SC44s.
Wootton Curve

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Into New Mexico, dropping down the hill at Keota
Just a grab with my new 150-600mm Tamron at Hebron. The heat and my 40D crop sensor body don't do as well with this lens.
I promptly dropped it and busted it up after this shot:(
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/19 18:57 by SD45X.

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Been wanting this shot for a while. One of the reasons I bought the drone.
Springer NM over the Cimarron River bridge.
No track warrant so they stopped short of the first semaphores



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/19 19:02 by SD45X.

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And then they left.
Wagon Mound NM. Sun was high and a gang was in the hole so I elected to take the hi road.
By now #3 had caught up.

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And I got lucky with a storm. Clouded up that nasty high sun. East switch Ojita with 3 following.
They met at Gise, and then 4 showed up at the approach to Chapelle.
The End

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WoW

Nice shots

Chris Parker
San Pedro

Posted from Android

Agreed. Very well done.

outstanding.  thanks for making the effort to post these..........

66

Superb.. thanks

Nice!!!

The Iron Horse 

Fantastic shots!

What they said! ^^^

Great series! As always, I like those semaphore shots! === === = === JLH
 

Nice! Hopefully a harbinger for next week...

:^)

Posted from Android

As stated above great chase and shots. I would have thought that the Chargers would be in the front, and the GE units following. Or will they be front and center later in the journey? Put the GE’s in dynamic for load effect or is this test train of proper tonnage to similate a regular consist?

CM80-46 Wrote:
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> As stated above great chase and shots. I would
> have thought that the Chargers would be in the
> front, and the GE units following. Or will they be
> front and center later in the journey? Put the
> GE’s in dynamic for load effect or is this test
> train of proper tonnage to similate a regular
> consist?

Seems to me that putting the GE's in trail (behind chargers) for additional dead weight would make the most sense on other legs. Pushing a load while pulling one is totally different than straight pulling, not to mention the train handling completely changes with dead power being pushed.

If they stay in trail for the entire test. The only reason I can imagine is being concerned about having a crossing incident with someone elses power in the lead. To play devils advocate, if that were the concern, why not mandate freight units be "spliced" between a dead (isolated) leader and the functioning unit? Sure, you wont have a working fridge or air conditioning but wouldnt be the first or last time neither worked on an other wise fully functional engine.

While the GE's have never been pretty, they've been real workhorses.  Personally, I love their chug sound as they bark out of a station, or up a grade.  The Chargers may be new and efficient, but literally they are silent.  You can barely hear anything.  Let's be honest:  a big part of railfanning is the sonic, auditory aspect.

Those big "X" grated areas are bound to collect lots of snow during prairie winter storms.........

> > As stated above great chase and shots. I would
> > have thought that the Chargers would be in the
> > front, and the GE units following. Or will they
> be
> > front and center later in the journey? 

perhaps not all crews are qualified on them was the fear?