Mom and I went down to Monroe for the day; Mom to visit her sister, me to watch the trains. On the way we stopped in at scenic Romulus, where we just missed a train going north on the CSX. The Norfolk Southern was dead as usual.
After a few minutes' wait, a headlight appeared to the south. The train approached to the point where it was just under the I275 highway bridge and turned off the headlights. Determined to get a shot, we moved closer to the train, only to find it backing up. It was just a tease, being the switch job for the New Boston auto mixing center.
Slightly upset, I suggested that we continue on south. Just north of Carleton we encountered the tail end of a southbound CSX train. We gave chase, only to have our path blocked by a train on the elusive I&O line through Carleton. Darn!
We hauled through Carleton, trying to get a shot of the CSX going past the tower, but the gates were going down as we pulled up to the crossing. Unable to get closer - or a clear shot - due to a rare Sunday traffic snarl, I popped off a few shots from the car. They went straight to the dumper.
Literally seething, I was determined to get a shot of this thing. Through some miracle, we found room to turn the car around in the ever-growing snarl and floored it out of town. Despite a detour, several red lights, and a confusing fork in the road, we pulled up at a crossing just of Telegraph Road on the outskirts of Monroe.
What you can't see from these pictures is that I'm standing in a ditch. This shot had all kinds of weird poles, trash, and oddly shaped debris littering the area.
Have I ever mentioned that Monroe is a total pain in the rear? All the trains are there, but so are the one way streets, strip malls, traffic surprises, belching power plants, ghettos, and other assorted hazards. While four mainlines pass near each other, they are separated by at least several of the above. Getting from one location to another is always a real challenge, hampered by Yugo-sized chuckholes, permanent barricades, and burned out stoplights.
Hence, I flee south of the city to the open fields, where I can cover three of the four mainlines with relative ease and without fear for my safety.
On the way down to my favorite photo spot, we passed the CSX hopper job again. It was parked on the main with the headlights turned off.
The engineer - female - came out and put a plastic bag on the front pilot. She was anxious to return to her air-conditioned cab, and I don't blame her.
Upon arriving at my favorite spot I settled in to let the action happen. The river attracts plenty of folks seeking to fish, and, while no trains did come by, it was entertaining to watch the antics of the fishers and the fished.
Detail shot on the call box:
After nearly an hour of no trains, I found another detail to shoot. Can you say "bokeh?"
No sooner did the signal on the NS southbound come up green than Mom arrived. I was thoroughly fed up with the railroads at this point and wasn't disappointed to be leaving. We followed the NS-SB on Kentucky street into town. While the signals were green, there were no trains in sight. Suddenly, from what sounded like the back seat, a very loud whistle sounded. Darnit! Southbound on the CN! Screwed again.
While we were jammed up in traffic on our way north out of Monroe, what did I hear but a whistle. The eternal problem with Monroe is that I can never tell which line the train is on - not from the whistle, at least. Of course, If I hear something that sounds like a demented goose, the best bet is that it's on the CN. I suppose a scanner might help, but with all the noise created by little radio devices - laptops, cordless phones, ovens, cars, battery chargers, pagers, cell phones, garage door openers, and the like - the radios aren't worth diddly squat. The folks at the railroad club tell me those huge antennas help, but then your car looks like it might be driven by a terrorist.
Anyway, we got ourselves back to the earlier photo spot. I feared that we had the wrong line, but the train showed up in a few minutes.
The reward at the end of the day came at Carleton. For all the missed shots and lack of trains, two matched YN3 locomotives and a solid consist was a very welcome relief.
I even managed to get my tower shot, with nice stormy skies to boot.
And as the thunder and lightning turned loose, I popped off my last shots of the day. What a feeling to be standing there with the roar of the locomotives accelerating their train out of the siding, competing with the intermittent rumbles of thunder, all reverberating in the canyon between the train and elevator. As the first big drops of rain started to splatter down, I decided that it had been a good day after all.
