I had a fun RR day yesterday with my son, wife, and two of his friends. My sons friends wanted to see my layout so they came over yesterday afternoon. We ran trains, answered questions, compared notes, and generally had a good time. The trains ran as advertised (what's the likelihood of that happening when you have guests?) and we enjoyed the cool basement on a hot afternoon.
My son Jim and his friend Larry from St. Louis
My wife Dixie and my son's friend Jan.
Everyone decides that we were hungry so we went to my favorite local train theme restaurant The Bull Moose. It is a heavyweight railroad car built in the late 1800's and was one that Teddy Roosevelt used to campaign for President on. He was in the Bull Moose party and hence the name of the restaurant. They have to die for hamburgers and if you get the right seats you can see the BNSF mainline while eating. We were finished eating and hadn't seen a train go by. The server asked if we had had a good meal? I replied yes, but we didn't see any trains. At that exact point we heard the local Amtrak Illinois Zephyr's horn as it flew by at 60 - 70 MPH. A perfect ending to a great meal!
We drove home for a stretch along the BNSF mainline and didn't see any more trains. I turned off and we took the back roads back to our house. As we approached a rural RR crossing, the crossing signals started flashing just as we were approaching the crossing! It is a former BNSF branchline that is operated by I think Illinois Railnet. A loaded 100 plus car silica sand unit train passed with two BNSF engines on the front and two more pushing at the rear.
After it passed we decided to hurry up and beat it to the crossing in our subdivision. Here is a picture of us as the train was coming and we made a last minute decision that we all needed to be on the other side of the tracks. (Don't try this at home.) The train was probably going about 10 MPH as the track is poor here and scheduled to be replaced.
We decided it was a great opportunity to take some short videos.
Had a fun day enjoying trains, both model and real. This hobby is meant to be shared.
Art
