I just returned from my annual series of meetings with the Chemical Engineering Department at Mo S&T in Rolla. On the way down yesterday morning I paid attention where I could to the former Frisco Eastern Division - it looks pretty darn good! New signals (vs the searchlights the Frisco had) and, in many places, great looking new, fresh ballast. I only saw one train - I heard horns as I left the dinner function on-campus last night and drove over to the tracks just past the curve west of the former depot site - a westbound BNSF ballast train came rolling through. Looked to be about 60-75 BNSF ballast hoppers, empty I think. Two shiny BNSF pumpkin units - don't know what they were because they rolled by as I was parking, except that they were big! Later last night, we had a big kahuna thunder & lightening storm. Power was off at the hotel and most of the west end of town along I44 for over two hours. Gave me a chance to explore Facebook on my iPhone - that was the only light in the room. Long live the Eastern Division of the Frisco Railway! Ken
It was an impressive ballast train the night of 4/22/2010. The locomotives looked brand new. I, too, cannot correctly remember what they were. My gut feel says they were SD70ACEs, but do not quote me. Windsor"gotta get the motion-sensor camera set up"Spring
George - What time of the evening did you see it? My sighting was sometime around 9:30p-9:45p last night (4/22/10). Could it have been the same train? Ken
The ballast train passed by around dinner time (between 18:00 and 19:00) on 4/22/2010, so it certainly was the same one you saw in Rolla. The cars were mostly, but not totally, side-discharge hoppers with solar panels on the sides. Even the center-dump cars had the solar panels. Staying on the thread theme, the Friday 4/23/2010 eastbound intermodal lead unit was a guest SD70ACE, KCS 4121. This is not the first time for one of those. I have pictures of KCS 4046 leading June 28, 2008's eastbound intermodal. I got lucky enough to get a shot of it at Fairlawn the next day as it went west. In addition, BNSF 737, one of the red and silver warbonnet Dash-9 C44Ws led a west bound train of Balfour-Beatty heavy track maintenance equipment Saturday 4/24/2010 at 3:30 PM. Somebody's doing some work somewhere!
