DLD Reference: 20170528-29 Downers Grove Main

Memorial Day Sunday: two commuters and two intermodals.
Memorial Day: two commuters and an outbound intermodal.

As I walked down Main Street to the station, an inbound arrived (4:49).

I should have counted the cars because it seemed to have a lot of them. As expected, it had two engines, 195 and 196. Since it was a Sunday, it would be a local; and I conclude that a lot of horsepower is needed to accelerate that many cars from every station and maintain the schedule.

It had eight cars. Half of them were the newer cars because they had bigger widows. I took this picture to show that a long train will fit on the platform with room to spare. They don't need to stop the engine of an outbound commuter on the street because of platform length. (I went to the car night on June 2 and sat in the outbound shelter while I ate my Aurelio's Pizza. An outbound express roared through town on the middle track. I noticed it had 10 cars. (I can't remember how many engines.) but it appears there is room for two more cars with two engines, barely.)

When I noticed that at least one of the locomotives continued to "smoke,"...

...I zoomed in (55mm) and continued to take pictures because it continued to smoke. Metra keeps complaining that their engines are over 40 years old and that they need new ones. I believe them. Some smoke at the beginning because of turbo lag is not too bad. But to see black smoke emitted continuously past Washington Avenue is bad news.

I took this distant shot so that I could later digitally zoom to see if it was still smoking.

It was.

I killed time by walking around a construction site where a bank building and its parking lot used to be.

The power company cut a hole in the treeline so I discovered a vantage point a block west of Forest.

While walking between Forest and Main, I noticed a couple of spikes that were 2" loose with just two ties between them.

Time stamp for an eastbound intermodal: 5:26

YouTube

It had been sunny, but when it approached time for the outbound commuter, guess what passed overhead.

They announced several times that the 5:25 would be 7-15 minutes late to "accommodate boarding." Remember that double engine commuter heading downtown? There must have been a parade or Memorial Service that was expected to end during the late afternoon.
5:35

YouTube

I consider little puff of brown smoke when it first starts pulling away from the station to be OK because it is turbo lag. So some of Metra's engines still run relatively clean.

I'm catching the size of the crowd strung out across the tracks after the gates went up.

Since the weather was great on Memorial Day and my daughter wants me to walk a half hour each day and since I agree with her that I need some exercise, I went to that hole in the tree line that the power company made. I was expecting an eastbound commuter, but when I heard the crossing gates I turned around to see a westbound intermodal.

Since I saw how bad my videos were without a tripod, I decided to do a lot of stills.

I normally don't have problems with rotating my horizontal shots as I did this one. It is not a big deal because the power poles can be rotated to vertical with GIMP.

BNSF #8014 ES44C4 built 1/14, Someone explained that when they run five locomotives on an intermodal, it is a hot intermodel and one unit is a spare because they want to maintain speed with no intermuptions if a unit breaks.

A mistake because I didn't crank the zoom lens to a wide angle quick enough. But I can tell from the above overall picture of the engines that this was #6389 ES44AC built 1/09.

#6986 ES44C4 built 2-6/12

#4419 C44-9W built 1-12/99

#6853 ES44C4 built 1-2/12 Tier III Compliant

A long cut of stacks and everyone of them was double high. Normally I'll see some single high platforms on the Racetrack. (On the transcon (former Santa Fe) the containers are normally all double high.)

I din't bother to take pictures of all of the stacks because it would be too difficult to tell where the pictures overlapped because the containers look too much alike. But I took this picture to show the transition from stacks to pigs.

And that there not only was a container mixed in with the pigs,...

...it was a weird one.

Second from the end was another...

...weird one.

While it was passing me, I could tell by the sound that it was slowing down.

So I took a sequence of pictures to document that it actually stopped. The cars to the right of the train are parked on a track in the Downers Grove yard. The microwave tower is in the center of where the turntable used to be.

Because they built a grade separation at Belmont, they can park a train here without blocking traffic.

And then the inbound commuter that I was expecting showed up next to it.

If I cropped it, this would be a decent cab car photo. I normally don't take photos of the cab cars.

#119 is idling since the train is slowing down for a station stop, so it better not be blowing smoke.

The intermodal has left. I assume it had to stop because of some MoW activity. It is not unusual for BNSF to schedule MoW on the weekends and holidays to minimize impact on commuter and freight traffic.

As I walked down Main Street to the station, an inbound arrived (4:49).

When I noticed that at least one of the locomotives continued to "smoke,"...

...I zoomed in (55mm) and continued to take pictures because it continued to smoke. Metra keeps complaining that their engines are over 40 years old and that they need new ones. Some smoke at the beginning because of turbo lag is not too bad. But to see black smoke emitted continuously past Washington Avenue is bad news.

I took this distant shot so that I could later digitally zoom to see if it was still smoking.

It was.

I killed time by walking around a construction site where a bank building and its parking lot used to be.

The power company cut a hole in the treeline so I discovered a vantage point a block west of Forest.

While walking between Forest and Main, I discovered a couple of spikes that were 2" loose with just two ties between them.

Time stamp for an eastbound intermodal: 5:26

YouTube

It had been sunny, but when it approached time for the outbound commuter, guess what passed overhead.

YouTube

I little puff of brown smoke when it first starts I consider to be OK. This shows that not all Metra engines blow a lot of black exhaust when they pull out of the station.

I'm catching the size of the crowd strung out across the tracks after the gates went up.

Since I saw how bad my videos were without a tripod, I decided to do a lot of stills.

I normally don't have problems with rotating horizontal shots. It is not a big deal because he power poles can be rotated with GIMP.

BNSF #8014 ES44C4 built 1/14

A mistake because I didn't get to a wide angle quick enough. But I can tell from the above overall picture of the engines that this was #6389 ES44AC built 1/09.

#6986 ES44C4 built 2-6/12

#4419 C44-9W built 1-12/99

#6853 ES44C4 built 1-2/12 Tier III Compliant

A long cut of stacks and everyone of them was double high. Normally I'll see some single high on the Racetrack. (On the transcon (former Santa Fe) the containers are normally all double high.)

And that there not only was a container mixed in with the pigs,...

...it was a weird one.

Second from the end was another...

...weird one.

While it was passing me, I could tell by the sound that it was slowing down.

And then the inbound commuter that I was expecting showed up next to it.

If I cropped it, this would be a decent cab car photo. I normally don't take photos of the cab cars.

#119 is idling, so it better not be blowing smoke.

Looking West to check on the intermodal shows it has left. I assume it had to stop because of some MoW activity. It is not unusual for BNSF to schedule MoW on the weekends and holidays to minimize impact on commuter and freight traffic. Again, the cars that you still see are on a track in the yard.

Looking East, I catch the inbound leaving the station. A big blob of smoke, but it was just turbo lag.

Digitally zoomed

It soon quit smoking.

This is the hole in the trees that I was shooting from. It is at the northwest corner of Permit D Lot (free after 11am).

I walked east of Washington to get a shot of the expected outbound commuter. (The Village Center parking lot and lawn cutting makes this track side accessible.) I happen to notice that a pole had remotely controlled line switches. I could not figure out how it worked. So I took a bunch of pictures from different angles so that later I can digitally zoom in and study them some more.

Then an Amtrak Superliner came at 3:22. Since the California Zephyr (Emeryville, CA) is due into Naperville at 2:34, this better be the Southwest Chief (Los Angeles, CA) that is due in Naperville at 3:50.

The train had one "baggage" car and eight Superliner cars.

Unlike commuters, which are slowing down here for the station, Amtraks go through at the passenger track speed of 70mph. Just because railfans make it look easy getting a picture of the lead locomotive, it is not easy when the train is moving that fast. At least I did grab both engine numbers.

I tried to keep that mile marker of "21" out of my pictures, but it is just part of the clutter in this photo.

The streetlight over the engine pretty well destroys this shot.

So we have one engine, #113, pulling eight cars on a holiday local. Does running with a packed train on Sunday vs. a normal train on Monday make a difference in the horsepower needed to accelerate? I notice the pattern that the Metra logo is high on the new cars and low on the old cars. I went back to one of my first photos where I have a picture of the cars on the north side. There is no logo on that side.

I had noticed the brakes on the rear of the train were squealing. The squeal was so loud it practically hurt my ears. Now I see the last two cars were new ones. Hopefully the brake shoes will wear in and quit squealing.