Welcome to

Sunday morning 12-21-08 I left the house around 09:30 AM for Seattle in hopes of catching some trains in the freshly fallen snow we had gotten overnight. I stopped at Argo first waiting for something to happen but all that was going on was the manual sweeping of switches to remove all the snow. UP 669 was waiting to come out of Argo Yard to head south but was having a very long wait. Finally the guys sweeping the switches headed off for lunch so the UP 669 finally started out.

Apparently the switches that had just been swept would not throw as the 669 had to stop and hand line themselves! Here the 669 is moving south on track 3 headed for the UP yard along Airport Way.

UP 669 is an ex-MOP GP38-2 built in January 1980 as the MP 2169. All this action wore me out (sarcasm) so I decided to head south towards Auburn in hopes of seeing some real trains! I drove over to Renton and headed south on Highway 167 and heard the dispatcher telling a local crew at Auburn there was a northbound coming and to clear up in the yard. So I got off at Kent and drove over to the old depot to wait on what it might be. As I sat in the truck I watched as a pretty good snow squall was moving through the area. I could soon hear horns well off to the south so I headed over to the grade crossing north of the depot and heard the train blow for more crossings before seeing the headlight come over the horizon. Snow was still coming down as the train blew by at 12:54 PM.

Power was BNSF 7793/969/5339 and as the last car passed I took this going away shot. Lots of swirling snow.

With the train by I took this photo of the Kent depot.

I believe it was built by the NP but am not sure when the last time a passenger train actually stopped at the old depot.

As I headed towards Auburn I could hear the train that just passed calling Stacy St yard identifying themselves as the M-VAWEVE. Not much was happening at Auburn either. A local with units 2087/2900 were ready to leave Auburn and head back to Tacoma so I caught them just north of the Sounder station passing by after crossing over.

I could hear a couple of southbounds coming but they were moving rather slow as all the switches were frozen up to the north. Auto traffic in Auburn was rather light so I walked over to Main Street and took a photo looking east in town. Kind of Christmas looking I thought!

Back at the tracks I watched as the first southbound came up to the crossovers and stopped. They had to crossover and head into the yard but the switches were frozen and someone showed up to work on clearing it out. I could also hear a second southbound coming up behind the first. About 30 minutes later I decided it was time to head for home but I drove up C street to see what the southbound power was. It was just that. Light power. Two GE’s. Behind it the second train was more light power also waiting to head into the yard. Looks like I made the right call not waiting around to see light power! Lots of snow had fallen but just one nice looking freight train all day. I am sure this won’t be the last snow we see this winter though.

I managed to get some photos this past week with all the snow that has been falling in Western Washington.

During a heavy snow that came down on Thursday 12-18-08 I sat down by Horton St in the south part of Seattle hoping for a train to go by. Naturally there was no action but I did get a photo of the Rabanco switcher BNSF 2876. This GP39M was built as SP GP35 6617 which made me wonder if it had seen some some of the heavy snows over Donner Pass years back when it was an SP unit.

Nothing else going on so I headed down to Argo and photographed the UP 7644 on the wye pocket.

Then on Saturday 12-20-08 I had to made a delivery up to Everett in the early morning and after finishing I got my truck and headed back down to Horton St as there was a bit of sunshine peeking thru along with some very cold temperatures. Not much was going on with the exception of a northbound BNSF coal train passing by at 10:11 AM with BNSF 5788/9648 up front and DPU’s 9677/8819 on the rear.

I was a bit surprised Amtrak #11 wasn’t by yet but the southbound signals were all red telling me nothing else was coming south for awhile. I then headed down towards Auburn to get some lunch and see how much snow was down that way. I saw no other trains on the Seattle Sub but did catch an eastbound on the Stampede Sub leaving Auburn.

http://stampedesubblog.qstation.org/?p=194