Today I was supposed to go with a friend to Henry Ford Museum, but after last night’s snowfall, it was deemed not to be a good idea. Left with a free day and a cloudless sky, I trudged through the fresh snow to the Amtrak Station. If I played my cards correctly, assuming everything was running on time, I could see three trains in three hours.
It was extremely windy and I caught some falling snow off a church.
The Amtrak Station in Ann Arbor is of the flat and brown type. Ironically, Ann Arbor has a very nice depot, built by the Michigan Central out of stone and constructed with pleasing lines. It is right next to Amtrak, but is now a good restaurant. For a while Amtrak was selling tickets out of the former baggage room, but that is no more.
The first train due in was a Westbound Amtrak to Chicago. My first photo spot was up on the North side of Depot Street, East of the Depot proper. There is no sidewalk, requiring me to stand on the side of a steep embankment to wait for the train. I thought about sitting on the guardrail, but the cars going past were splashing everywhere. You can’t hear the trains when they are approaching as there are no grade crossings for miles so the only option is to leave the camera on, look through the viewfinder, and wait.
I didn’t have long to wait as the train showed up within minutes of my arrival. One time though, I must have stood there for over an hour, feeling like an idiot as all the cars drove past.
4) I tried to play “Hide the Trailing Trash” with the Amfleet car behind the lead locomotive, but my timing was a little too quick.
5) Amtrak doesn’t run very many Michigan Corridor trains with a locomotive on each end, so this was a pleasant surprise. Normally I wind up with a shot of a cabbage car.
6) The sun favored shooting in this direction, so I did.
7) At least nobody has to see out those windows…
The bridge in the background is in the process of being replaced. All the junk along the tracks is owned by the construction company and is quite good at cluttering up most photos taken in this area. The bridge has been “under construction” for more than a year now. It looks like the new bridge has a higher clearance than the last. That may be a sign of progress as I can’t recall having seen any double-stack cars operate on this line.
Once the train passed, I put my rear in gear and headed for the Depot, several thousand feet away. Usually the traps on the heritage cars are frozen so tight that it takes a matter of minutes to do the business at the station. This allows me enough time to get past the train and bag several more shots as it leaves town.
First I had to cross the street to get back to the sidewalk. What do you know -- a whole line of snowplows pulled up in the center lane and began to turn into the city garage. I darted between plows, narrowly avoided a SUV on the opposite side, and had to wait again for a plow that had turned into the actual drive. I ran down the sidewalk, clutching DSLR and with 35lbs backpack. Two tenants, both large apartment blocks, had failed to shovel their walks. I couldn’t see where the train was as the bridge and MC Depot were in my line of sight, so I assumed it was still there.
I crossed the street again to get to the tracks. This corner is very dangerous as it is both at the top of one hill, at the bottom of two hills, and right after a blind corner (on another hill). Oh, and the street is brick, making for slippery and uneven footing. They seem to have an accident where a car comes down the hill and smashes into another that comes up the hill at the same time every week.
Fortune smiled this time around – the salt/plow trucks were still snarling traffic and all the cars on Depot Street were backed up – letting me run right through.
I charged on, down the hill, past the MC Depot, under the bridge, and onto the platform – to find to my utter horror that the last passengers were boarding through the Amfleet car.
Out of breath after my sprint, I had no choice but to let the train get away. I rested at the far end of the platform and shot the snow on the pine trees.
I then decided to mosey on around the curve to see what was going on by the Artrain. Of course, the snow by the tracks was way to deep, so I had to follow Depot on down to where it joins Main, take Main up under the Ann Arbor Railroad bridge, and then double back to the tracks.
This is the Ann Arbor bridge across Amtrak and the Huron River.
Further investigation revealed something that infuriated me. The city had installed an eight foot tall black cyclone fence along the tracks. Just several months ago they had paved over part of the land adjacent to Amtrak and called it a ‘river walk.’ I loved it because it was a red carpet along the tracks, but I have never seen very many people on it, but that might be because it doesn’t really start anywhere and it doesn’t really go anywhere. After all, who really wants to take a relaxing stroll next to a freight line? Well, except railfans. I imagine therein lies the fence.
Oh, well. It was a great photo spot for a while. I sighted through my 500mm for old times’ sake, and it looked like there was a great big black snake winding down the tracks. Perhaps a grain train will derail and shear the whole thing off, but that would have to be an awfully big derailment and after something like that they would replace the fence with a three-foot thick concrete wall, but I digress…
Looking for something to do, I hauled out a polarizer and tried the birch tree on for size. I saved this as a tiny file to not waste space, in case you wondered why it might look trashed.
I had that feeling that it might be train time again, so I thrashed my way back down Main, down Depot, through a parking lot (Kasey’s Tavern had the lot plowed, but not the sidewalk. What gives? Doesn’t any snow company handle both types of operations?) I positioned myself in a snow bank in time to hear a familiar tooting. The Norfolk Southern Eastbound local was coming through.
I readied the camera, brought it to my eye, and then the local appeared. Holy Cow! Cover you eyes! Hide the children! It’s Union Pacific. And it’s covered in dirt!
No “Hide the trailing trash” here. It’s more like “Run and hide” yourself.
This always happens. Every time I do this ‘Three trains, three hours’ gig, it is always the local that looks the trashiest. No two cars alike and certainly no two engines alike. I swear that the folks at Jackson Yard swap out the lead Catfish and toss on whatever trash power they have sitting around. The last time it was a grilled and patched Conrail Mp15something-or-other leading the Catfish. And before that it was a Conrail Dash-8 that had dozens of shredded plastic bags wedged all over the pilot and plastered to the nose. I can’t print or show that kind of junk…
I love the snow it kicks up, but the loco makes me want to hurl. Really, would a bath hurt? A passenger on the platform said that it looked like it had leprosy. With UP in charge they must be waiting for the rest of the dirt to blow off…
For crying out loud, this is MICHIGAN. If I wanted to run out and see UP, I would be in Detroit today. I came here to see Amtrak and NS, not what Omaha dragged in. Notice that the rear, which has the least air blowing on it, has the most dirt.
Well, enough of that. (Whew!) I like how it kicked up the snow, although the camera surely did not.
After drying off the camera I went and sat in the station for the hour until the Eastbound Amtrak was due to arrive. I dumped the photos to the PowerBook and converted #15 to see if it was as bad as I thought it was. Well, it was.
And now, what I had really been waiting for. The Amtrak showed up early, but not before I was in position. Blast…I see some rubbish blown into a tree…one moment…but you don’t, thanks to Photoshop. A good consist, although there is a scratch on the lead unit, but the best sight of the day. Shivering quite violently, I brought out the Image Stabilization and the resulting shot is sharp enough to cut yourself. And I love the heat distortion.
But about that white and green building – great view, but it always looks like a wave that is about to crash down onto the train. I preferred the coal yard that was there.
Don’t look now, but Number 30 got a little cleaner. UP, however, was beyond any attempt at repair.
What? Dirty again? Photoshop is too much work.
Thought you’d seen dirty? Look at this!
And the snow packed in around the trucks is impressive, too.
This station stop lasted much longer than the first. Want to guess why?
And the answer is…
The tool at right was being used to work the snow out of the mechanism and to break up the ice. Winter in Michigan can be quite a drag. Usually by the time the deep freeze sets in in February the Horizon cars will be behaving so badly that they will be replaced with Superliners. Every year Amtrak tells us that they have fixed the problem – in March, there are Superliners coming through for at least several weeks.
Now if I were coming down those steps with a big heavy bag, I would probably land my rear on that little yellow thing. High-level platforms, anyone?
The train was at the station so long that I thought it was going to freeze to the tracks. I moved myself down to the end of the platform and under the bridge.
27) And the other end.
Headed towards Detroit. I really wish they would hurry up and finish that bridge.
Something that stuck my fancy on the way home…
Another city-dweller….
