Late May 2016
Local Highlights

Photos by Dave Ingles

After the first week of May’s action (see “Early May Local Action” file), I didn’t lift the cameras for a week. There were deadlines at CLASSIC TRAINS, and I was preparing for the big week-plus “Front-Range Explorers” trip beginning May 29 (see separate file). With rail traffic overall plunging and most roads storing a large number of locomotives, the month saw not much special or different in the way of motive power on the CN or CP around here, and road construction around Waukesha began to severely limit options on using certain key streets, as we became “Orange Barrel City.” Late on the afternoon of Sunday, May 15, what I used to call CN #445 (I haven’t kept up with current designations, mainly because my scanner has become temperamental) did show up with two NS units, 7593/7008, with 115 cars, many of them empty potash hoppers, which I shot at the Amron siding switch on the south side of Waukesha at 5:53 p.m.

Two days later, being totally bored with my usual sites and photo angles, and confident of the usual motive power, I set up for CN’s afternoon northbound stack train at the Newhall St. overpass, one of only two local grade-separated CN intersections in Waukesha. Sure enough, it had 8814/8870, two of the 165 SD70M-2s delivered 2007-2010, at 5:06 p.m. The street bridge replaced a wooden structure maybe 7 or 8 years ago now, and “period” photos of Soo Line steam here show a siding cutting thru the street intersection to go to industries behind me. Today a National Guard Armory is about all that’s there.

We have heard confirmation about the Brookfield depot, built for a CM&StP predecessor in possibly the late 1860s and reputedly the oldest railroad structure in continuous use in the state (CP MofW people do store some stuff inside), eventually being moved a city block’s worth west, and south of the tracks, to become a trail head or such, but no move is imminent. An agreement between CP and the city is reportedly in place. Meantime, we continue to try to occasionally include it in photos. Here’s Amtrak #7, the westbound “Empire Builder” passing on-time at 4:10 p.m. on May 18 with units 14/180 and the usual 11 cars. The crane at left is on the site of new, railroad-facing apartments going in, just east of an earlier building which has a nice Italian restaurant on the first floor and was the site of a retirement party for KPC’s Kevin Keefe a few weeks previous.

I was again trying out my new zoom lens (a used Nikon 80-300) I bought for the Explorers trip, as it’s lighter and shorter than my trusty big honker 80-200, and while it vignettes the corners at most in-between settings, I crop images anyway and so for local stuff, it’s acceptable tho not preferred. A half hour after getting #7 at Brookfield, CP #289 showed up at Duplainville behind NS 9680/CP 9767/8767 with 106 cars. Note the rear units are exactly 100 numbers apart! I don’t memorize new diesel models anymore, but with the “Canadian Trackside Guide,” a “railfan’s bible,” handy, I can tell you that the 9767 is one of 301 AC4400CWs that CP received during 1995-2004, series 9500-9840 (not solid), this one in 2003, while 8767 is one of 261 ES44ACs received during 2005-2011 in series 8700-8960, this one built in 2006. To me, they are all just “new GEs” and I wish CP kept them a bit cleaner.

On Thursday, May 19th, after seeing a northbound empty tank-car train go by the Duplainville siding (with routine power, 2838/3027), I pulled up on Green Road to be first in line as the gates came down to shoot the southbound pulling out of the passing track. This was also tank cars, either oil or ethanol loads (I didn’t get the placard numbers), led by 2948/2822, with DPU 3003, just before 4 p.m. We usually are not treated to “unusual performances” around area tracks, but a couple of cars behind me, as the train was just starting to approach, I heard noises behind me, and glanced in the side mirror. Two teenagers had jumped out of their car waiting in line and began, well, “cavorting;” it was obviously not an argument or any dangerous situation, just two typical teen girls giggling, yelling, and dancing around, so it made for a couple of interesting diversionary photos. It’s Spring, and kids will be kids. As the train began passing, I U-turned and drove into the adjacent Quad/Graphics parking lot to shoot the DPU, which I’d seen stopped a mile to the north, and could see from there that a boy was driving the red car the girls were passengers in, and he dutifully stayed behind the wheel. Some of us don’t find watching trains go by to be boring, but it’s understandable that teens do.

Tired of the Duplainville scene, I went out to Delafield, just east of Nashotah siding on Vettleson Road, a favorite spot of friend Jeff Madden, to shoot Amtrak #7 sweeping around the curve toward Nashotah, on-time at 4:20 with 11 cars as usual but three units up front: 121/197/46.

The next day, after watching CP #199 at Duplainville (8779/8749, 141 cars including 9 auto trilevels ahead of 118 container wells) at 2:11, I went to Pewaukee and here came a surprise, local G-67, with ECO Geeps 2206/2302 and 3 cars, at 2:27. This local thru the years has originated at either Muskego Yard in Milwaukee or Portage, Wis., but in recent times we haven’t seen it – it comes east from Portage and usually turns back at either Reeseville, Watertown, or Oconomowoc (there are few on-line customers left). So I don’t know these circumstances, nor have I seen it since.

On May 21 (the following day), I was again at Duplainville for CP #281, this time with two “box-car emblem” CSX units, 4384/8156 — one of their recently ugly-cab rebuilds and an old veteran SD40-2 — with 92 cars at 3:40. Essentially waiting to see Amtrak #7, I was parked near the diamonds when CN #119 went through at 3:51, with 2186/2637, so I followed him north to Spring Creek and spotted southbound CN #348 in the passing track, waiting for him and for Amtrak. Having spent my late teen years in Michigan, where I shot a lot of the Chesapeake & Ohio, I hold no negative thoughts about CSX’s so-called “dark future” livery of solid blue with yellow trim, because it’s essentially the continuation of a color scheme that began on C&O’s Michigan affiliate Pere Marquette back in the 1940s! The colors also approximate the University of Michigan’s “maize and blue.”

An industrial firm located in the northwest quadrant of the Duplainville diamonds last year bought the lot across the tracks to the south, between the road and the CN, and cleared it out of all brush, trees, and one or two derelict truck trailers. Left for us lately has been an empty lot — giving a nice open view to the east from the road — with a giant pile of sawdust, the last remnants of the larger trees on the lot. Well, in May the owners put a large hand-lettered sign “Free Mulch” on the pile, and this day, waiting for Amtrak to come by, I watched as a woman drove her vehicle onto the lot and loaded some of that free mulch. Amtrak #7 passed at 4:12, on-time, with 11 cars behind 72/132. Then the CN southbound got the diamond, and went south with 122 cars behind 2907/2904, which I shot at Joseph Road at 4:21. The GEs are ES44ACs (aka “GEVOs”), 176 of them beginning at 2800 delivered during 2012-2015. By mid-June the entire sawdust pile was gone.

On Sunday, May 22, I was back at Brookfield to shoot Amtrak #7 and was surprised — and caught out of position — to see four of the Friends of 261 group’s cars on the rear, heading home to Minneapolis. Engines: 133/162, with 15 cars (but more than 15 restless riders) at 4:12.

CP #281, by Duplainville a short time later, had an unusually lettered (name on one line) GE, 9727, up front with 9371. This was the last “non-routine” local work for me in May before I left on the big “Front-Range Explorers” trip (see separate file).

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