Live Steam Trip

Fellow railfan and speeder club member Fred Hoeser invited me to Hudson on Sunday, August 14th, 2011 to see the 1" scale train he had purchased.  I took railfans Joe Lewis and Ron Donaldson with me as they had never seen the St. Croix Live Steam layout.   http://www.stcroixrr.org/   To say they were impressed with the setup and amount of trackage would be an understatement!!  Here is Fred with his new Rock Island train, 1" scale.  Ready to ride behind are Joe and Ron.

Let's take a little ride:

 

Note the block signal.  The entire line has ABS signalling and even allows opposing train action as there are sidings along the line.  We had to wait here for a green signal.

Here's Joe riding behind steam on the same track we are on (the reason we had the red block).

Fred offered to let me run his train.  This engine has a sound system (sounds great as power is applied) with a bell and whistle.  It even has dynamic brakes.  His engine runs on 2 batteries and when the brakes are applied, the motors run in reverse--just like the real trains!!!!

There are 3 sizes of trains here.  Fred's is the middle size.  The largest is 1 1/2" scale.  We took a ride on this train, owned by the club and any member can use it:

A few shots along this line:

A large roundhouse is located in the center of the property where members can store and work on their equipment.  Here is a shot of the top of it.  A new 2-story car barn for members cars is being constructed in the back left:

 

Here's a few shots from inside the roundhouse:

 

 

After leaving the St. Croix Railroad we stopped at Rick Ohlf's gigantic N-gauge layout that he is constructing with the help of friend Don Shultz.  Rick says there is 2300 feet of track here and Don says it will have 15,000 trees when completed!!

After leaving here, we stopped in at Baldwin to see Jeff Ellefson's HO model railroad.  He is modelling LaCrosse to the Twin Cities with the BN and Milwaukee mainlines.  This is a really neat operational railroad and here are a few pix of his double deck setup.  Here's Jeff beside his creation:

 A great way to spend a nice Sunday in August!!

Railfanning Wisconsin Northern 11/27/10

A friend, Brian Sykes of Atlanta, GA, and formerly of Cameron was back home for Thanksgiving.  He wanted to railfan the shortline railroad Wisconsin Northern that runs between Chippewa Falls and Barron.  It was Saturday and no trains were running but we were able to see some industries it serves.

There's a new sand business in New Auburn that will be shipping out unit trains of 100 cars.  They fill the cars with frac (short for fracture) sand that is used in oil drilling.  The sand is sent to Texas.  The first train of 60 cars was sent last week and subsequent cars will be 100 in length.

At New Auburn we found sand piled for future shipments.

They load the sand with an endloader from the "road" between the sand and track.

Frac sand is VERY FINE and hard but feels very soft to the touch.  But these piles contain lots of rocks.  Apparently this sand will be filtered or strained, and dried, when it gets to Texas.

This is the loader they use to load the cars:

And this is the equipment they use(d) to clean out and level this area:

To the left of the sand piles is a large rectangular depression they have made.  I have no idea what it is for.  Any thoughts????

We don't know where they are getting the sand.  (But we MAY have found out).
We left New Auburn and went to Bloomer where I showed Brian the new WWT shipping point.  Again, being Saturday, nothing was happening.  We found 8 tank cars waiting to be filled.  Only 6 fit on this siding so 2 were stored at PMI Steel right next to this facility.  There may be cars inside the building also.

We left Bloomer to go to Norma, on the north side of Chippewa Falls where a gigantic sand shipping facility is being built.  But on the way, north of Eagleton, I noticed some big sand piles.  So we drove over there and we THINK we have found the frac sand pit.  Again, no action or people around, but there has been recently and there's a brand new gate here.  But there's not trucks around . . . . ???

At Norma, in the wye, we found this tank car with a pump beside it.  It is being unloaded and contains dust inhibitor they put on roads.

I have taken many pictures of the sprawling new sand plant so didn't take any this time.  We were more interested in the tracks they are going to put in.  They have started dumping ballast and have lots of ties piled ready to go.  Here's a shot of where they are going to tie into the existing track.  Looks like they will hook into the long passing track that goes down the hill and switches back into the main.

After driving around Chippewa Falls looking at other rail sites, it was getting dark so we headed home.  Couldn't be late--was going to the "Unstoppable" movie.  I highly recommend it.  A great day (and the Badgers and Gophers BOTH won!!)

1000 Miles!

I set a goal to ride my bicycle 1000 miles this summer.  Then I had the second ankle surgery in May, and then all the poor weather early in the summer.  Speaking of weather, why is it that the wind is always blowing towards me when I'm riding??   I just had a thought--maybe it's because I'm riding so fast that the wind just FEELS like it's always in my face.  Don't snicker--I once got my bike up to 17 MPH.  It was going down a steep hill, with the wind behind me, and pedaling like crazy.  My average speed is just a little below that.  And the hills around Barron--how did God make them all at least 10 times as long uphill as downhill??  
Anyway, I rode 15 miles this afternoon which put me over 1000 miles. 
So, now I need a new goal for next summer.  What do you think?  How about . . . . . . . . 10,000 miles????

Arlyn