EvolvingWorld » Trains

Enough hot sauce

tomh — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:28:37 +0000

As many of you know, I like trains, and I like spicy food. This raises the question, is this spicy enough ?

(Thanks to Zars on Trainorders!)

Happy New Year and more MOW equipment

tomh — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:46:31 +0000

Back in Menlo Park, the Caltrain facility has a couple of newcomers parked on their siding.

Cute little tamper on the Lyngso Lead

tomh — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:26:25 +0000

I went biking today over to Fremont via the Dumbarton Bridge. On the way I crossed 84 and saw that work is continuing on the branch to the Port of Redwood City. Sitting at the end of the lead into Lyngso I saw parked this cool little piece of MOW equipment.

Really small locomotive

tomh — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:03:27 +0000

The funny little tractor I saw a couple months ago next to the track reveals its power as a mighty locomotive. This interesting little beast can drive on its tires on the road, or pull a train. The pictures here show it coupled onto a set of Caltrain construction cars. As always, these guys tend to run mostly on weekends or off hours, and then spend the day time parked here.
A few days after the tractor arrived, this tamper also showed up.
As with many experiences in life, to casual passers by this may appear a static scene, but close examination day after day reveals a wealth of detail and change.

Lyngso a rail customer once more

tomh — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:12:51 +0000

Today while riding the bike to work I saw something suprising. For years the only occupants of the siding off the Port of Redwood city branch leading to Lyngso building materials have been various pieces of MOW equipment. But today a BNSF hopper car was spotted at the end of the track and some kind of pellet like material was being offloaded into a truck via a conveyor belt. The local must have had a nice time switching this, because they would have had to move the MOW equipment out of the way, and then put it back afterwards to slide this car in. All in all the line to the port is an interesting reminder of what freight railroading was like all over the peninsula in the post war years when the Southern Pacific ran lots of short industrial leads all over the new industrial parks, almost of all of which have vanished in the mean time. However of late the port has been quite busy with both Granite rock and the metal recycling people taking lots of cars, and the chemical folks guzzling the occasional tank car. So it’s nice to see Lyngso actually using their connection again too!

Plasser Dynamic Track Stabilizer

tomh — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:08:09 +0000

Today an almost new Plasser dynamic track stabilizer (built 2008) showed up at our place.
Update 8/27: The Caltrain folks have been hard at work on the vehicle today. There seems to be a problem with the helper wheels outboard of the truck on one end.

Caltrain work train

tomh — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:50:45 +0000

Today we had a new visitor, the 503 and the 504 with two side dumpers, two flat cars, and a couple of loaded gravel cars parked on our track. Unlike the archaic gravel cars, some of these flat cars, built in the late 70′s, almost seem modern!

Caltrain Ballast Dump Cars

tomh — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:37:26 +0000

Caltrain has been running ballast trains again to their terminal at Chilco street again, and this morning i went outside and saw this cut of cars newly arrived on our neighborhood siding. These cars are incredibly covered in grafitti. Many of them are very old. Check out this one:

Built in 1957, this one is older than I am! It’s a tribute to railroad technology that these half century old cars still keep on going, especially amazing considering the abuse ballast dump cars are subjected to!

Return of the MOW Equipment

tomh — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:41:12 +0000

It’s time for another walk to our favorite siding off the Dumbarton line in Menlo Park. Today we had some new arrivals, courtesy of Uncle Pete. They just showed up last Friday. When they came in, it was decided that this little guy had to come off the track. Notice the chain drive and the perpendicular arrangement of the train wheels and the road wheels. Care to go for a ride?

Our little train track

tomh — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:59:38 +0000

In front of the Art in Action’s office is a little siding off the Dumbarton line. While there’s not a lot of railroad traffic, it is fascinating that every couple of days something else turns up parked here. Sometimes it’s gravel hoppers, sometimes some locomotives laying over. Lately we’ve had a variety of Maintenance of Way equipment showing up. Here’s what got parked here today:

Since I wrote this first, I did a little more research. The traffic here isn’t a coincidence. Across the street is Caltrain’s construction management office, together with an equipment yard. Years ago there was an industrial spur here crossing Bohannon, and heading towards 101. In 2003 the spur was severed, and the switch connected to this new spur. With Caltrain’s facility across the street, this is a convenient spot for them to park all sorts of stuff, which is why we get quite variety of stuff here.