20190630 UP Proviso Yard action

Fred Van Dorpe provided a map as to how to access the public parking lot in Global 2 so that one can see the locomotive #1111 on display. This proved to be useful when I drove in and saw truck lanes ahead because I knew I had to go to the left.

Fred Van Dorpe post
Satellite

A view from the parked car.

20190630 8367

A roster shot of #1111.

But I noticed that I could see the top of the hump and other stuff. So I took a sequence of wide-angle shots turning to my right to get an overview of what you can see from the parking lot.

Then I took another "railfan photo."

But I was more interested in the yard towers and intermodal equipment. Note the tank car on the left that is the beginning of a cut of cars that is going to be shoved over the hump.

Even though it was a Sunday, a cut of cars was being shoved over the hump. This video wasn't worth uploading.

But this one I did upload at 2x speed. You can see the top of some of the cars as they roll down the hump.
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I stopped the video because they were spending some time getting this autorack car to go. It finally went and they started shoving cars again.

An overview of the cars in the cut.

Turning to the left, we can see that the hump yard lead curves to the North.

I stopped the video because the sun had come out, and I wanted to take some more railfan photos of #1111. As Murphy's Law would have it, the sun went away as I got the camera off the tripod. This photo notes that there was no need to wait for the sun to come back out. It is like that long black cloud was designed to keep me from having some sun again.

And then I heard a noise. As you can see from the black exhaust, the noise was the starting of the Translift. So I put the camera back in the tripod.

I set the zoom lens so that I could catch the hump and the Translift at the same time. Even with double the action, things are still slow so this video is also 2X. I could not believe how long it took to hook the UPS trailer. Since it is a Sunday, was it a trainee? Are all lifts that slow? I couldn't tell because once it set out the high priority UPS trailer, it went to the other end where I could not see what was happening.
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After I got bored with the video, I took a max zoom (200mm) photo of the far end so that I could later digitally zoom in to see what was happening with the Translift. I can't figure it out.

Some of the power parked near the hump tower. Given the different cab and the exhaust stacks, these are gensets that are designed for doing yard work with reduced pollution.

Back to taking photos of the far end so that I can study them later. I took a sequence so that I could record movement. In particular, one of the Translifts starts moving to the right.

19:10:03

19:12:00

19:13:56

19:14:42

19:14:52

This is the one boxcar that I saw in the entire cut of cars. I've never seen so few tank cars and so many autoracks in a mixed freight. On the other hand, I normally watch BNSF trains instead of UP. (I took a trip three days later and watched some BNSF action in Lockport, IL. I learned that BNSF is now hauling autoracks in merchandise freights as well as in unit trains.)

A photo with view blocks but it shows that only three locomotives were parked here.

Some overview and closeup shots as I leave this part of the yard.

The Translift that was moving to the right has made some progress.

19:20:20

In this more general overview, the parking lot is on the right, the hump yard tower is skunked by #1111 and the automobile has someone inside. I think he is making sure no railfan goes past the yellow barriers. I had set up my tripod for the videos next to the yellow barriers at the far end of this access road.

I discovered a (Sunday) parking spot along the access road so I could get out and take photos of the hump lead that goes off to the north.

Any fallen flag is worthy of a closeup.

Or two.

It used to be that about everything, including grain, was hauled in boxcars. After Southern Railroad developed the covered hopper for grain cargo, some railroads refused to buy them because they originally were used primarily during harvest season. (Now trucks are used for the harvest rush and hoppers are used year round for hauling grain from big interior grain elevators to markets such as ports for export and chicken farms in the southeast. And railroads do now buy and supply hoppers. I have seen unit trains consisting entirely of new CSX and BNSF hoppers.) But back to the early history of hoppers. Companies that needed to haul grain either bought their own or did long term leases. Since the cars were dedicated to them, they put their logo on them. You can tell this is an old paint job not only because of the rust but because it has a logo. Or the remnants of one. It is strange that it doesn't include the company's name.

Taking photos of cars in a hump shove is easy because they move so slowly. So I grabbed some details to study later.

Are these aluminum ignots? If so, they are still heavy because these cars are probably loaded close to 286,000 pounds.

A video that just panned the cut from right to left. It is not worth uploading.

The end of the shove is getting closer to this access road.

19:28:40

A lone tank car. I'm used to seeing a lot more tank cars than I saw in this cut.

There are supposed to be numbers in that placard.

Even when I zoom in, I can't find numbers.

Camera Resolution

There were several blocks of autoracks in this cut.

Providence & Worchester Railroad

It used to be that taggers did just the flat surface of boxcars. But boxcars have become rare enough that I guess they decided autoracks are flat enough.

The end is in sight.

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I went back to the parking lot to get another zoom shot of the distant Translift action.

19:35:38

And I found a spot where I could get a clear shot, after cropping, of the three parked gensets: #887, #897 and #?30.

In the meantime, the end of the shove has made it to the parking lot area.

I'm back to the access road along the north/south road and I spot a couple of regular locomotives rolling past. An advantage of taking photos is that I now notice what I did not see at the time---there is a worker standing on the front platform. That makes sense since the locomotives are going backwards. He is the engineer's eyes.

I took video of the locomotives rolling by. But it can be summed up...

...with the following screenshot @ 0:22. This catches them (#4380 and #5790) after they have turned into the light, the dirt on #5790, the rise of the hump lead in the foreground and a safety slogan.

These are the two locomotives shoving the hump yard cut on the lead's curve.

While waiting for traffic to clear on Lake Street, I took photos of the old (near) and new (far) underpasses. Note the wood timbers next to the abutment for the old underpass.

I had seen this logo on a previous trip to this area, so I circled around to it and parked the car to check it out. I thought the bridge would have been replaced by now.

This is the west side of the underpass of North Avenue under UP/C&NW north of their Proviso Yard. (street view)

These photos show abandonment is not the reason they didn't replace this bridge. It is obviously still being used, even on a Sunday. Note how little traffic is on North Ave during a Sunday evening.

Back home, as I approached my driveway, I had noticed an eastbound intermodal was rolling across Main Street. Then I noticed some westbound pumpkins (orange locomotives). So I parked the car in the driveway, grabbed the camera, set the zoom at max (200mm), took a still photo to focus the lens, and then a video snippet of two intermodal trains on The Racetrack.

Unfortunately, it seemed to have focused on the tree trunk on the right. My new lens has a manual focus feature. According to the user manual, there are two ways to use it. But the one I thought I understood doesn't seem to work. So it is time to study the user manual some more. Once again, a video can be summed up with a screenshot (0:11) The orange container is on the eastbound train, which is behind the westbound that has the red and white containers. There is such a big gap because both w/b platforms in the foreground are domestic (53') platforms carrying international (40') containers.

(Facebooked) Remaining hump yards in Chicagoland: CN Kirk, IHB Blue Island, BRC Belt, UP Proviso. But UP Proviso is supposed to be closed.

Triple Meets on The Racetrack

This is the second posting of a triple meet on the Racetrack with no information as to where it was.

Evan Walker posted
The elusive triple meet.

I took this photo to confirm that Evan was facing East from Washington Street in Downers Grove, IL. He was using a telephoto with decent sun. My photo is from the crossing at 200mm.

20190321 but saved in 20161017 7409

While I was there, I took the view looking West at 200mm.

If I saved the original triple-meet post, I don't remember where. I do remember this was the photo I used to illustrate that the meet was west of LaVergne.

20161017 6466

Or maybe it was this one. I noticed both of these are slightly rotated. Was a focused too much on the crossovers? The key for verifying the photo's location was the signal bridges and the crossovers in front of a station's platform.

6468

Ben Taylor's Idea of the Month

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Marge Mcfarlin and USACE Lock Database

I discovered that the US Army Core of Engineers has a web site that displays their lock activity. So purpose of this posting is to record interesting links as well as try to track were Marge goes during her stay in the Chicago area.

I can select which range of locks I on the Illinois Waterway for which I want data. I narrowed it down to Dresden Isand and Brandon Road. Most of the vessels were running light or with a small tow. (Although, the Lemont Trader went downbound through Brandon with 8 barges.) However, Marge Mcfarlin went upbound with 15 barges through Dresden between 03:59 and 06:43 on 2018/11/08. I recognized the name as one of Ingram's pushboats. Like Sam Fleming, it is a line-haul pushboat that has a retractable pilot house.

Marge Mcfarlin, USACE Vessel #0575287

So I started tracking its location in the Chicago area. Around 2pm, it was downstream of Mugz's Hideout. Theoretically, if I headed there, I might be able to get photos of it. But my main movtivation for getting a photo of a tow is to determine its size. But the USACE report includes the number of barges that locked through. It will be interesting if it goes through Brandon or if it stays in the Ingram's Channahon fleeting area. Since the weather has turned cold, I'll spend my time getting location updates rather than grinding out miles on the interstates to Mugz's Hideout. Some of the locks on the Illinois River were closed this summer for repairs. I checked the lock status page to confirm that the closures are done. The other tow through Dresden larger than 8 barges was the upbound Killian L. Huger with 13 barges.

Looking a Starved Rock and Marseilles, I was surprised to see that only two of the tows were larger than 8 --- 13 and 15. And our friend Sam M Fleming had the 15-barge tow. There were two light tows and tows as small as 2 and 3 barges. I expected the tows to be larger as we got into the mainstream of the river. For the two wicker dam locks (Lagrange and Peoria), of the 10 tows listed, only 8, 13, and 15 was larger than 3.

I did a query for all of the locks on the river. It appears to be sorted by vessel number. More accurately, the output is not sorted; it is displayed as it is stored in the database. Of the 35 entries, one was a pleasure craft (#9999999) through the O'Brien lock.
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The large delays for Brandon in this output caught my eye.

Looking at the arrival times vs. the Start of Lock, it appears they made Derek, Aggie and Lemont wait until after Lousiana and Cody locked through together. And Aggie locked through before Derek because they had to lower the water anyhow before Derek could enter. Even Lousiana and Cody had to wait until 1am even though Capt cleared the lock at midnight.

1410:  273.2
1426:  271.2   It went backwards! It must be in some sort of holding pattern waiting for a (big) spot in the fleeting area. Now I'm glad I didn't take off to try to see it. The holding area is around a bend and not visible from Mugz's Hideout.
1445:  271.2   In fact, its 0500 location was 271.2. So it has been waiting a rather long time.
1512:  271.2
1612:  271.6
1715:  271.4
1816:  270.5   Ingram still shows upbound.

USACE shows downbound with arrival at 1415 and departure at 1745. So it is a good thing I never went to Mugz's Hideout because it was downstream of the bend all afternoon.

Query of Dresden Lock delays at 6:26

2019:  262,8   Ingram is still showing upbound. But, obviously, we can wave goodbye to Marge.

I was going through the photos posted for Mugz's Hideout and noticed this one. Unfortunately, I can't find the name on it. You can tell this is around a fleeting area because it is a line-haul pushboat that is running light. The photo also has a nice view of the I-55 bridges.

Michael Pesek

One last check on Marge before I click Publish:
11-10-2018  1440:  170.5   It was at 208.4 at 0500