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Tuesday afternoon 11-24-09 was cloudy as I was headed south on Airport Way and as I passed over the UP’s Argo yard saw a UP Geep switching at the south end of the yard. I have a new handheld Vado HD camcorder and had been wanting to test it out. I parked and thought an overhead shot would be good so I walked up the overpass a bit and noticed the headlight of a train coming out of Stacy Street yard. So I continued up to see what this was and noticed it was a BNSF C44-9W, but behind it was a bunch of EMD’s. Cool! It was the M-SEAPAS and it pulled up to the signals and stopped just as a crew van pulled up. A crewman got out climbed up onto the lead GE, then came a couple of toots and they were on the move.

The EMD’s sounded great. The GE chugged and the EMD’s whined. I have always enjoyed taking overhead video’s of EMD’s as the sound is much clearer and the fans on the roof are sometimes the only moving object you can see on a modern locomotive. BNSF 5266/1874/2876/2091/2334 (C44-9W/SD39-2/GP39M/GP38-2/GP38-2) passed underneath and were gone by the time I got back to the truck. Only the first three units were online but it has been a long time since I last saw 4 EMD’s on a BNSF freight out of Seattle. It was a great few minutes spent trackside.

Here is BNSF M-SEAPAS Southbound:

Driving past South Seattle on Wednesday 11-18-09 I did a double take as I passed some BNSF power at the north end of the yard.  Trailing of three units was NS SD60 6668 in fresh paint.

With all the wide nosed units I have been seeing on the BNSF catching a non-wide nosed unit, and an off line one at that is quite a treat!  Too bad it wasn’t sunnier but I still thought it was a pretty nice catch.

The 6668 was delivered new to NS in December of 1988 so right now it is a month shy of being 21 years old.  Looks pretty good for a locomotive being around that long.