Thursday, February 24, 2011

Today's Train of Thought- At A Glacier's Pace; Feb 24, 2011

Today's rather snowy train of thought takes us back to Big Sky country before winter fully kicks in. The weather outside didn't look that frightful as railpictures.net contributor Rick Newton caught BNSF #7923 leading a quintet of BNSF SD40-2s as they grind to a halt just outside of Browning, in Glacier County Montana.

This stretch of the old Great Northern between Minneapolis-St Paul and Seattle was completed in 1893 and featured the Empire Builder as the premier passenger train (who's latest incarnation is being run by Amtrak). The stretch in northwestern Montana skirts the southern boundary of Glacier National Park as westbound trains begin their assault on the Rockies.

Here, the cascade green of Burlington Northern, Santa Fe 'Bluebonnet' and BNSF's Great Northern-inspired orange and Pullman green paint scheme are all represented on five SD40-2s handling an eastbound manifest freight as it grinds to a halt in a siding just outside of Browning, MT on a snowy October 6, 2007 day. The eastbound has just made its way through the difficult terrain and weather at the higher elevations and is entering a siding to let a westbound through.

No comments:

Post a Comment