Track Warrants

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Issue No. 27
September 4, 1996

• Track Warrants Menu
• Sloan Home page
• stevesln@aimnet.com

EDITORIAL

THIS ISSUE IS CARRYING RED MARKERS

This completes the double issue that carried news recieved before Labor Day. Again, it is being sent to the issue #25 mail list. The mail list will be updated for issue #28.
Steve

CN

HEAD ON COLLISION

Aug14-- Somewhere around that time, just before midnight Monday, freight Train 117 slammed head-on into a chain of eastbound railway cars with no locomotive, no crew and no reason to be on the main line. The three locomotives pulling the westbound train burstinto a ball of flame and about 30 of its 73 cars derailed on an isolated stretch of track 10 km east of Edson, Alta., closing one of CN's busiest freight lines.

Three bodies were pulled from the wreckage late Tuesday. They apparently were the engineer, the conductor and a non-employee rider.
via Dave Bono

CSX

FREIGHT TRAINS COLLIDED

Aug20-- Two freight trains collided head-on early Tuesday, killing at least one person near state highway 20 in the northern West Virginia community of Smithfield. Two injured people were airlifted to hospitals.
via James Czarnecki

SP

WTB: TWO DIESEL LOCOMOTIVES, GOOD CONDITION

Aug29--I am wondering if you could direct me to the right folks at Southern Pacific. We are a California-based export company. We have clients in South America who have asked us to find two diesel locomotives, both in very good running order, for use as sea-port shunting engines. Do you think Southern Pacific would have locomotives available which would be suitable for this purpose?

Thanks for your help,
Christopher Smits

Reply-To: silverado@innercite.com

SP RBB&B CIRCUS TRAIN ON CALTRAIN PENINSULA SUBDIVISION

Aug26---The Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus [Combined shows!] blue unit train ran in daylight from Sacramento to San Francisco on Monday August 26, 1996. Departure time out of Sacramento was supposed to be 0800, behind Amtrak "Capitol" #723 and "Coast Starlight" #11. Well, it ended up departing AHEAD of these trains, being put in at Davis for those trains to run around them. The latter never happened, as one fan found out when the train abruptly headed west prior to being overtaken by Amtrak. This resulted in #11 and #723 arriving in San Jose at about 12 noon that day, hours late. Anyway, train departed Oakland with two relatively clean SSW EMD GP60's on the point, back to back, 9627 and 9700. Train ran down the Hayward Line to Niles, meeting the westbound empty steel train (KAPGU) at Hayward siding and then ran into San Jose on the Milpitas Line (as predicted on the FLIMSIES! hotline), arriving at Newhall Street yard for a crew change at about 13:20.

Train was westbound through Mountain View at about 14:10 and arrived at the yard in South San Francisco at about 14:45. Raggedy SP GP40-2 7614 was ready and waiting to switch the train. The Cotton Belt units ended up with the rear of the train (COFC cars and containers labeled "DANGER: WILD ANIMALS" [lions and tigers]) and pulled it to the old Visitation Tower site where Amtrak-San Jose Control switched the train from #1 track to #2. This "animal only" circus train continued past Bayshore depot and then was lined into the old lead that goes over to the gates at Geneva Avenue. The train was then shoved slowly down that lead and switched apart in the gate area. Meanwhile, the "humans" only circus train was shoved by SP 7614 from South San Francisco to Visitation where the crossovers had to be hand thrown. Vandalism by circus animals was ruled out. 7614 then shoved the train down the old east end lead into the remaining yard track where circus buses and vehicles awaited the passengers.
MATT VUREK, DAVE BONO, MIKE LELAND, BANGERS WITH NIKONS

SP OUT OF GILROY WITH AN SD-9

Aug18--At 8PM this evening, I saw a westbound SP out of Gilroy with an SD-9 (possibly 4754?) (Way cool but # not likely, even 4354 is not on the CTC Board list of Survivors [#215, pg. 13]--Steve) teamed up between two AC4400's pulling a heavy intermodal. The SD was smoking up a storm as they accelerated out of town.. Quite a sight!
DCMcGill

SP STEAM ON THE COTTON BELT

Starting Labor weekend (Aug. 30), the Ft.Worth-based Tarantula RR will be operating SP #2248 (a 4-6-0) from Grapevine, Tx. to the Fort Worth Stockyards over the former Cotton Belt line. This is a change of operations from its shorter run totally within the city limits out of the old Frisco 8th Ave. Yard. Grapevine has relocated its Cotton Belt depot back to trackside and has installed a turntable nearby. (The turntable came from Santa Fe's North Yard, I believe.) A few test runs had been made over the new route in the last year. Grapevine anxiously awaits the arrival of its steam tourist train!
Dennis Hogan via L. G. Ruback [ On Track Ltd ]

UP

CHASED UP 844 YESTERDAY

Aug22--Chased UP 844 yesterday from Cheyenne, WY to Lodgepole, NE. Was great to see 844 once again, although one minor disappointment - it's painted BLACK again!!! There were the usual auxilliary passenger cars behind it, plus a short freight. One interesting WP box car in the most recent stylized feather! She also had two of the aux water tenders.

Rail traffic was extremely heavy, therefore the train was easy to chase. Only about a dozen other railfans were keeping pace.
Marv Van De Weert

SIGHTINGS

UP  SPFW       3333,2407,1671,2180,2454                               Mumford,TX
UP  SB            4312,3311,3411,3621                                              "
UP  SB            5072,3968,CRL554                                                 "
SP  MFLBT     8050,8031                                                       Hearne,TX
SP  1MBSMF    8362,7541,8021                                                     "
UP  53LOCAL   3638,3579                                                          "
SP  2MBSMF    8277,7369,8058                                                     "
UP  BVCB      5002,CNW8724,987,CRL548,3257,B4260,3517                 Valley Junction,TX
UP  NLSA      3652,2506                                                          "
UP  MXCHZ     3952,B4255,3789                                                    "
SP  LAMFF     8070,7462,8033                                                   Hearne,TX

LETTERS

TIDEWATER SOUTHERN

http://home.earthlink.net/~rattenne/tiderost.htm

Hey Rail Dudes,
Checkout this way-cool page created using Microsoft's Internet Assistant for Excel. Who needs to learn how to code tables in html when you can do it in Excel?
Ken Rattenne

HUH?

Just read the latest Track Warrents and liked the idea of live links embedded within the actual page. Neatest link: The DRGW Roster dude. The weirdest Link: The SOLI site. My only thought there is HUH?

By the way, why not take a poll of how many of your subscribers would just as soon not get the email version of TW but instead be notified when each new issue is online??

Maintaining one mail list is quite enough, thank you. The best bet is to bookmark the news page That way you can see between issue news and it includes a link to the latest issue. When that changes, you can go right to it. --Steve again

I personally would just as soon receive a notice that the current issue of TW Online is up and ready. I find myself not even downloading the email version and just going to the web version. Better looking, and with live links, more interesting.
Ken Rattenne

120 KODACHROME 64 PROFESSIONAL

I've always liked Kodachrome (but not being a serious photographer I never used the larger sizes). I asked a couple of friends who are avid photographers about this, and they verified it, though they did say the film could still be purchased and gave the following two places:

TriState (800) 221-1926 $4.59 PKR (64) USA 120
Cambridge (800) 221-2253 $4.15

The above are from Sept Popular Photography. I imagine that they're probably sold out by now, but it may be worth a try.
Stan Shepard

RE: TW #25

Aug23--Thanks for the information. Enjoy reading your TW's. Keep up the good work. It will be interesting to see along it is before Uncle Pete start repainting the SP diesels. Thanks agains, have a good day.
DH3rd

LINK TO YOUR HOME PAGE

Nice job on the Track Warrants Web Site. I added a link to your web site on my homepage of railroad links. It currently contains about 200 railroading links as well as a computer gaming and sports section and much more. I saw that you have a links section on your homepage to other railroading sites and would appreciate it if you would put a return link to my site. The index page for my entire site is at: http://home.earthlink.net/~muller/index.html Your link is in the Model Railroading section. Please let me know if you decide to add the link to the index page and I hope you enjoy browsing other great railroad sites from my home page.
Christopher Muller

The difference between the links on my index page and the links in the issues is that the links on the index page have been looked at and reviewed, the "in-issue" links often have not. I wish I had more time to web browse and really go look at all the sites. To all of you who have done so much work building good sites, I am sorry.
--Steve

ANOTHER FINE WEBSITE!

Steve--Here's another interesting website from General Electric Transportation Systems...
http://www.ge.com/transportation/ts10.htm
Nice presentation there.
Tom Krummell

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