FL9

I am actually writing this Christmas Day post on Friday, so I have some catching up to do.  Next I will go to the other extreme and write enough posts in advance to appear through January 10th, as I will be out of town until then.  This should allow me to finish off the rest of the return trip from Montana to Texas via Amtrak.

My wife and I are driving to Disneyworld near Orlando to meet family and watch the children play, so there won’t be too many train pictures from this trip due to the miles we need to cover.  Disneyworld has a behind-the-scenes tour of their steam railroad that sounded interesting at first.  Then I learned photography is not allowed during the bulk of the trip, so I decided to pass on it.

So now we will pick up where I left off as we boarded the eastbound Empire Builder at Essex, MT on the morning of October 17th, 2006.  Once we got settled in our sleeper compartment, I got the camera ready for this different view of all we had seen around Marias Pass over the past few days from the highways.  The sun was making brief appearances, and we could see signs of snow now as our elevation increased.

  

Looking back west as the train gained altitude we could see the snow sheds we had recently passed through.

  

The patches of sunlight made the landscape even more dramatic.

  

Now we saw our biggest hole in the clouds so far as we approached Marias.  Even to the naked eye, the contrast was too great to show any detail where the sun was shining through.

  

Passing through Marias we saw the first signs that there had been a snowfall of several inches the night before.

  

I was ready when the BNSF’s Continental Divide marker came into view on the north side of the train.

  

I was sorry now I did not drive up here the afternoon before, as I might have gotten a snow scene of something with this sign in it.  Oh well, next time……