May 12-15 2004

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A UP drifts downhill west of Caliente in the evening light
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And going away. Those grotty locos give a neat textured glint effect
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A BNSF train treads carefully past the debris from a recent derailment near tunnel 1
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Helpers in the same train head down through the Caliente horseshoe
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At Sandcut, the same train rides into the sunset
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Aforementioned sunset
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Back at the loop
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Thursday morning and a BNSF south/westbound approaches Tehachapi
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Near Marcel
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The Monolith shunt has some decent horsepower today in the form of a very smoky SD90
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A colorful consist whizzes past with me in hot pursuit (well, as fast as a two ton ute can pursue)
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Quick enough to beat it to Marcel
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And then Woodford
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And then Tunnel 5. Not a great shot thanks to the sun angle, but hey, at least it's different.
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And then Bealville. This is a crappy different shot too.
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Oooooo. Classic Tunnel 5
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I really screwed up the focus on this somehow, but I'm including it just to torture you
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Friday morning's crappy picfest... but after the trudge into Allard, it's the only one with decent sun. And it has the interesting ex CSX jobbie
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All these trains keep coming from the wrong direction. Whatever happened to the post sunrise BNSF uphill train parade?
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Another downhill!!! With an illegal immigrant!! Give me an uphill damn you
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Crap, a filthy UP train, followed by this one with a cleanish mini dash 8 on the pointy end 
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This train is too short for this location but I can't be bothered hanging around here with this kind of luck
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Finally a long train and it's almost clean. Actually, this is a huge train for two locos (a fair chunk is out of sight in the Allard horseshoe)
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Woohoo!!!! An SP loco! SD70M leads an ex-DRGW-ex-SP SD50 and CSX Dash 8 
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Better get another shot of that. How often do I see SP locos on the mainline these days?
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UP locos painted in the new 'dirt' color scheme head through Cable with their manifest
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Still at Cable, the UP baby dash train cops a nasty sun angle as it...
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...passes a waiting BNSF train with an interesting mix of color
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The cleanish intermodal heads through Cable
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After a three hour wait, the shadows encroach on a BNSF stack train threading its way down Clear Creek. 
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A decent sized BNSF manifest strung out around Caliente
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And passing the derailment site near Tunnel 1
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Saturday morning between Woodford and the loop.
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And two shots for the price of one walk. There were a few UP trains as well, but we're not going to post that filthy junk here.
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A nice set of Dash 9s in need of some more contrail eradication.
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Grotty loco, grotty train, grotty clouds, but a nice location with a Yucca flower
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Ditto with a cleaner loco - lead one is an AC 
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A wider angle than normal at Tunnel 2
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I don't normally take shots like this, but even with the sun off the nose, I quite like these SD70s at the loop
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After a camera interface problem (I screwed up) with a perfect BNSF downhill, I had to wait three more trains to get this one. I apologize for this shot - I'm trespassing and that's why the clouds appeared.
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A GP60M brings up the rear of this consist in Clear Creek
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Quite a nice shot again at CC. I had to wait (again) and the shadows prevented the wide shot (again).
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Might as well pop off a quickie, if you'll pardon the expression, on the way out of Bealville. Full speed to the airport!

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