Katy Coming Through!

[kevin_standlee]

A train coming into Fernley sounding its horn in repeated short bursts is not a good thing; it means there may be something (or worse, someone) on the tracks. Given that I'd just heard people on motorcycles whizzing by along the tracks, I feared the worst and rushed outside. There, slowing, was an eastbound Union Pacific train with a one-of-a-kind locomotive bearing a "heritage" paint scheme.


I got my phone unlimbered as fast as I could, but unfortunately, the shots I managed to get were not that great. Bracketed by a pair of "regular" locomotives here is Union Pacific 1988, wearing the paint scheme of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, or "Katy" as it was known. The MKT vanished in 1988 when it was merged into Missouri Pacific, which in turn is now part of Union Pacific.


Union Pacific repainted a series of "heritage scheme" locomotives in liveries evocative of the various railroads that have over time become part of UP. By the associative property of railroads, "Union Pacific" + anything = "Union Pacific." I've from time to time spotted other heritage-scheme locomotives coming through town, but this is the first time I managed to capture a picture of one.

Besides these UP locomotives, trains lately have had a veritable rainbow fleet as UP scrambles to hire locomotives to handle surging traffic. In the past few days I've seen locomotives painted for Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, Norfolk Southern, and Southern Pacific, the last being a "patch job" unit with a UP unit number painted over the ex-SP number while the rest of the unit remains in a now-badly-faded version of the fallen flag's "bloody nose" paint scheme with "Southern Pacific" in Rio Grande-style "speed lettering" from the days after the D&RGW merger and before the sale to UP.

Some say that modern mega-mergers and increasing containerization have taken all of the variety out of railroading, but you couldn't tell that from watching from our front porch. Even better, there's nobody who can tell us, "You're not allowed to take photos here!" because it's our own property.

Fortunately, whatever had prompted this train to sound the warning and stop apparently didn't lead to another tragedy, as a few minutes later they started back up and continued east.

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

You're living the train-spotter's ultimate fantasy.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's one of the main reasons we bought the house, even though it cost us a $20K premium over what it should have cost if we'd been a week earlier or had known that Lisa's father would have loaned us the money to buy it if we'd asked.

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

You should consider setting up a webcam or other similar type camera directly facing the tracks. There are some that can be set up to only turn on/record from a motion detector. That way you can always pull stills from the video you record.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

What I'd rather do is put up a full-time public webcam and mount it on the outside of the house facing the tracks. I have computers around here that I could probably dedicate to this purpose; however, I don't know the mechanics of setting up such a camera and sharing it with everyone.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

That would be fun. But I don't know how to do it either. Go check out the kitten and puppy cams. They obviously have it figured out.

[delosharriman]

When I was picking up AMTK 22 to St Louis last week, 21 was at the Fort Worth platform at the same time (as so often happens), with one of their Heritage units (Phase III livery) pulling.