Mobile Moment - Foggy Day

Yesterday the boys and I got some donuts for church coffee time by heading over to the Krispy Kreme in Seattle. October is a foggy month around our house, but usually the fog around Seattle has lifted even if our house is engulfed. This was not the case yesterday morning.

The entire area was wrapped in fog. It's another one of those weather conditions that we get here, other than rain. Natural occurrences like this can make even the photos taken by a camera phone look interesting. Granted they're dark and somewhat pixelated, but that fog just makes dark and pixelated into something that can be palpable.

These were taken with my Treo 750. The first photo was of possibly the dirtiest switcher I've ever seen. It was idling, warming up presumably to start moving double-stacks around. The second photo is of BNSF 2334, a standard-issue GP38 road switcher that gets plenty of local use (better photo here). It was idling in the fog as well; when they are parked right along the road like that, I still get amazed by the overall size of even the most rudimentary examples of switchers and road switchers. Recently there was a story about a switcher running from Harbor Island back to the Stacy Yard; a tractor-trailer rig ignored the warning horns and drove right into the path of the engine. The truck ultimately was flipped over and pushed 75 yards and into a Volvo. And the switcher? It was doing 5 mph at the time it impacted the truck. That tells me these things are big. And heavy. And dangerous. Keep off, kids...

The final shot was taken at the UP crossing at Lucille, as UP 561 was shuffling cars back into the yard alongside the BNSF Mainline that runs under Airport Way South. Better photo of this GP38 can be seen here. 561 has a hand-painted number sign on one side held on by duct tape. Certainly not the poster child of road switchers, but filled with character nonetheless. There is a playground nearby where the boys and I can go hand out. One night we were there for the better part of an hour. 561 rolled back and forth on this switching track about four times during our visit. It's heavily used and very urban.

That morning I also shot a video of a passing double-stack train at Holgate, but the soundtrack of the video is so saturated from the horn blast that it's simply not usable. Oh well.

Heritage One Paint Scheme

BNSF 7155 is an EMD SD-40. That means it has six axles as opposed to four (which would be a "GP" series locomotive). Built in 1979 for the Burlington Northern, it has never been renumbered.

7155 was repainted in the attractive "Heritage One" paint scheme sometime in the 1990s, possibly during a rebuild. Heritage One blended colors and logos of some legacy railroads that made up the new BNSF in 1995; the cross logo on the front and BNSF font style on the side were lifted directly from the Santa Fe, while the colors were common on the Great Northern Railway (folded into the Burlington Northern in 1970). Since 1995 there have been a couple of changes to the paint scheme (called "Heritage II and Heritage III" not surprisingly).

Check out the heavy clouds behind the locomotive. Yeah, that's Seattle for you!