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Friday afternoon 3-6-09 while driving north to Everett I made a run by of South Seattle to see what the evening Z would have for power.  Used to seeing BNSF GEVO’s and H2 C44-9W’s I wasn’t expecting much but hoped for a Warbonnet or maybe an H1 C44-9W somewhere in the lashup.

I could see there was an H2 C44-9W at the west end of the power as I approached but it looked different from a distance.  Turned out to be the BNSF 4097 with a partially primered front end along with a gray front door.  It was unusual enough to get me to stop for some photos.  Here is the entire lashup of BNSF 4097/4817/5366/993 with a Tacoma bound stack train waiting for a crew in the distance.

A telephoto brings out the entire front end of the BNSF C44-9W.

I doubt I would have even photographed the 4097 had it not been for the primered front end.  I then took a standard roster shot of the BNSF 4097.

I walked down to the BNSF 993 at the east end of the consist and took a rear end roster photo as the sun angle was not good for a front end shot.  The H1 paint scheme without a doubt looks great on a C44-9W.  Really too bad BNSF did not stick with it.

The air conditioner cover even matches the rest of the unit!  There had been some discussion that BNSF was going to renumber these units into the 4200 and 5500 series sometime soon but that is apparently not going to happen after all.  But at least I have this shot of the 993 now just in case.

On this date 20 years ago the Seattle Sub had to deal with a lot of snow in the Seattle area.  A lot of people say it does not snow much here in March but these photos tell a different story.

On Thursday March 2, 1989 it was snowing heavily in the morning.  Work was shut down for the day so I was out photographing trains.  I was at Argo around 08:30 AM and caught southbound #693 with SD40-2′s 7098/8060/7837 slowly heading out of Argo at 08:50 AM.

I then quickly drove down to Military Road and caught the 7098 here at speed.

I checked out Stacy Street Yard next and found a couple of southbounds side by side. 

BN 6349/7039 would be heading out on train #692 later and BN 2079 would take a transfer out later in the day as well.

Before noon I was back at Argo where I photographed southbound train #91 with BN 3120/4001 at 12:00 PM.

At 1:10 PM I photographed BN 389 on a switch job on the west side of the drawbridge coming into West Seattle.

In all 12″ of snow fell on 3-2-89.  It was a pretty odd day for photographing trains! 

March 2, 2009 on the other hand was pretty tame in comparison.  A little rain, a bit of sunshine and temps in the 50′s.