Yesterday I decided to wash the salt and dirt and junk off my car, so after class was done for the day, I drove to this car wash I like to go to...it's within sight of the NS Chicago line, and at this time of the year, I can see the trains passing by while washing the car. So having had my appetite wheted while spraying the car off (and it was such a terrific idea on my part- or would have been if the temperature had at least been above freezing...), upon leaving the car wash, I headed east toward Elkhart, rather than west toward Mishawaka and school (and thus unfinished homework
). To arrive in Elkhart, I had to pass by the entire length of the Elkhart Yard, in which was resting a very, very long intermodal train, mostly made of double stacks. I don't remember which locomotives were on the point. I believe they were on the fuel pad, but for some reason didn't bother to stop and shoot a picture. Arriving at the depot, I was a few minutes early to watch the NS 5528 pull a short train onto the line that runs up toward Kzoo and Grand Rapids (?):
A couple minutes later, NS 9131 and 8773(?) pulled the intermodal I'd seen sitting on the fuel pad east. Actually, I did get at least one shot of those locomotives, but it was from the road and came out pretty blurry. This train was on the second track from the parking lot (of the station) as it left town. What I didn't realize until it was just about too late was that there was a second intermodal train coming into town, from the east (it was a WB). Led by BNSF (Warbonnet) 705, it mainly consisted of UPS and a couple other motor carrier's trailers. In my attempt to take a decent picture of it, I hit the off button on the camera rather than the shutter button leaving myself frantically scrambling to turn the camera back on in order to get a going away shot of the locomotive.
After this train passed, I stuck around for just one more. This one was over on the line that I believe splits off from the other two tracks in Goshen and heads south through Marian and points south. Pulled by NS 4624 and CRIX 5978:
was a whole lot of trailers on flat cars. I believe these are FEMA trailers, headed south for the Gulf Coast. I did manage to capture this entire train on video, and will upload it to the internet later.
Today in class all I knew was that I wanted to do something with trains when classes were over. After running through a lot of ideas, I ran into a former room mate who had mentioned that there was going to be a track meet at Goshen College tonight. Since I'd kind of wanted to go watch him pole vault (supposedly he's pretty good at it) I found out from him where exactly (kind of) it was and what time to be there around. So I was like, SWEET! I can go to that and railfan the railroad lines through Goshen. Well, unfortunately, I never made it to Goshen. I made it as far as Elkhart and didn't leave there until after dark (the point at which my cameras more or tless quit working, despite the flash).
I don't recall the entire order of trains off the top of my head. I don't like to take notes, and more or less just plain forgot to take a notepad with me, so until I can get the video off the camera, I won't have a listing of which locomotives passed through town. Not meeting the requirements to carry a scanner in this state, I wasn't listening to my scanner very closely, so I don't have train numbers, just locomotive numbers. After I get the video part done, I'll finish my report.
