In the hole for one, maybe two. Deer Creek, Iowa Summer 2015. On this day, shortly after this photo was taken, the mayfly swarms were so thick we had to stop working because I couldn’t talk on the radio without flies going in my mouth. To give it perspective - a sunny day was turned into overcast for about 15 minutes by a massive swarm of mayflies. Eventually, they died off and we were able to go back to work. It was in the high 90s that day, and the rent-a-wreck widebody motor we had on the point didn’t have AC, so it was a windows open kind of run. As we were pulling out of Deer Creek, I used the switch broom to sweep piles of dead flies out of the cab.
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Took two of my favorite train gals Amber and Irene on the CP holiday train in 2015. We rode out of Sturtevant, Wisconsin. The ladies did an ode to a graffiti writers crede - “cover yo face!”
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Groundhogger Brian Clifton pauses for a moment from bleeding off cars in 15 track at Nahant, Iowa. Always enjoy shooting coworkers in their element.
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Cotter, Iowa was a part of my old stomping grounds for about the first three of my railroad career. Cotter is where CTC ends and TWC begins for about 50 miles to the top of Rutledge Hill near Ottumwa. For those non train nerds - that basically means you are running on signals or have a piece of paper in your possession that gives you authority to occupy the mainline. Similar to driving your car through a city with stoplights versus stopping at a toll booth to get a ticket to drive on the highway. In fact, track warrants are often called tickets - you know you had a good trip if you had a two ticket trip from Davenport, Iowa to Ottumwa. That means you had no meets or everything was put in the hole for you.
Besides the Nahant industry track, Heinz, Letts, and Linby, Cotter is one of the few sidings where meets could take place on this side of the railroad. At around 6,000 feet, both Cotter and Linby are short sidings by todays standards, leaving Letts and Heinz to be used for larger meets. This creates a large gap for about 70 miles of track where you won’t meet a single train.
I had been envisioning this shot for several years and finally had the opportunity to bag a decent photo of CP’s 474. A friendly call from an old friend with a heads up, good luck and good light produced some solid results. Also note, these are some of the last searchlight signals standing out here, and are especially significant because of the Rock Island heritage. I believe the only other set of searchlights is at Rutledge and those might have fallen by now.
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CP's southbound St. Paul - Kansas City manifest train no. 474 -26 maintains track speed of 40 mph through Ainsworth, Iowa. NS's Wabash heritage unit is on the point.
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