FL9

After leaving the peaceful banks of the Flathead River, Judy and I drove all the way west to civilization at Belton where the tracks emerge from the canyon on their way to Whitefish.  We had lunch and fueled up, and then I walked across the street to get a photo of the Amtrak depot that also serves West Glacier.

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Black Friday seems like an incompatible nickname for a day that started out perfectly clear.  My wife had to go to work and my visiting younger stepson Doug needed to work on a college paper, so I grabbed up the camera bag and headed out the door.  I heard the BNSF Wichita Falls Sub dispatcher talking to the 6100 East around Decatur, so I headed in that direction.  As I came around Loop 820 I encountered heavy fog around White Settlement, but it had cleared off again by the time I reached Saginaw.  Nothing was happening at the diamonds, so I drove on up to Hicks and set up beside the long straight stretch next to the airfield.  

Two westbounds were meeting the eastbound GEVO-powered coal train at Avondale, but I decided to stay here and let him come to me.  However my first shot of the day turned out not to be of the 6100, as a northbound UP freight on the Duncan Sub motored by on the way to Wichita.  As he was coming out of the southern winter sun, I framed him as a broadside across the field as he passed my location, complete with an SP trailing unit.

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Even though I posted no train pictures yesterday, I cannot say I did not see any.  I had to run some things down to the office late yesterday afternoon, and when I came out I heard DS22 talking to a southbound loaded coal approaching Tower 55.  The lead unit was the BNSF 5771, and that sounded sufficiently new to be worth a detour on the way home.  The light was getting low, so I drove the short distance from the office over to the area around Seminary Road to look for an open area.  The seminary crossing itself was already in shadow, and I was about to move on when I heard a horn approaching from the south instead of the coal train I was expecting from the north.  I ran up onto a rise on the south side of the crossing, and bagged a late-running Amtrak #22 with the 157 leading seven hi-level cars.

Now I heard on the radio that the coal train was waiting at Tower 55 for #22 to pass by.  This gave me time to move on north to a grassy spot just south of the Berry Street underpass where I would still have direct light from the sun that was now skirting the tree tops.  The loaded coal arrived with about two minutes to spare.

By the time the DPU roared by, the sun was gone and I headed back home content with my quick two-for-one fix for the day.

For today’s post on Thanksgiving day, we will take a holiday from train photos in Montana or anywhere else.  After leaving the monuments at Marias Pass in yesterday’s blog, we decided to stop at the location where Bear Creek flows into the Flathead River on a journey to the Pacific Ocean.  Please enjoy the peace and tranquility we discovered here a few miles east of Essex.

This first view is looking southwest up the river towards the Great Bear Wilderness.

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