It's 3 AM, I Must Be Railfanning

Amtrak in Fargo

Desire

I've always wanted to photograph Amtrak's Empire Builder in North Dakota. It passes through Fargo and Grand Forks, both places that our family visits now and then for shopping. The problem is that it stops in those two cities in the middle of the night.

Train 7, the westbound Empire Builder, is scheduled to stop in Fargo at 03:24 and Grand Forks at 04:41, while train 8, the eastbound, is scheduled to stop in Grand Forks at 01:02 and Fargo at 02:18. If they're on time, they should meet somewhere between Fargo and Detroit Lakes, MN.

The Setup

We went to Fargo last month to spend the weekend shopping and just getting out of Winnipeg. We arrived on the evening of Friday, January 20th and spent the 21st shopping. As we were relaxing in our hotel on Saturday night, I checked the Amtrak app and noted that the eastbound Empire Builder was an hour late, meaning it was forecast to be in Fargo at about the same time as the westbound Empire Builder. A plan formed.

I discussed my plan with my wife. As usual she thought I was crazy, but was OK with me getting up in the middle of the night to photograph trains, as long as she didn't have to get up.

I laid out all my supplies before bedtime. A partial list:

• Camera bag
• Tripod
• Coat, mitts, hat, scarf
• Clothes
• Cell phone
• Car keys

It was foggy Saturday evening, given the mild temperatures outside, but I wasn't too concerned. I went to bed after setting my cell phone to alarm at 02:45.

The Journey

I awoke, dressed quickly, and snuck out of the hotel room without waking anyone. Good. I took the stairs down to the ground floor and headed out to the parking lot to find our van. After about 15 minutes of driving, I was at the Amtrak depot.

Amtrak station (L) and ex Great Northern station (R)

Amtrak's Fargo station is actually housed in the former Great Northern freight depot. The adjacent station building is occupied by the Great Northern Bicycle Company.

I parked on a nearby street because I didn't know the parking situation at the station. I think I would have been OK parking there but better safe than sorry. There was a fair amount of activity at the station, with a few cars idling nearby and some people were being dropped off at the station.

I went inside and asked the Amtrak agent which train was coming in first. He saw my camera and told me the westbound was arriving first, and said to watch out for his baggage truck when I was taking photos. I didn't plan on being on the platform and I told him that. My plan was to shoot from the crossings on either side of the station.

But First, A Surprise

I went to the North Broadway crossing to set up my tripod and camera. As I was getting ready, I heard a train approaching from the east. It turned out to be a BNSF manifest freight train led by BNSF 6069, 4602 and 8971. I took video with my iPhone.


After that blew through, I finished setting up to wait for the westbound Amtrak Empire Builder.


While waiting, I recorded a little video about how to focus your camera at night here!

The Westbound

The Amtrak train came along not long after the BNSF train went through. The train crawled up to the Broadway Drive crossing, with AMTK 113 sticking its nose into the crossing and keeping the arms down and the crossing active.

AMTK 113 in Fargo, North Dakota at night on the Amtrak Empire Builder

I kinda liked the fog's effect on the lights!

I always get asked what settings I used, so for the above photo I used a 2 second exposure at f/10 and ISO 100. I used the 2 second self timer on my camera (on the tripod) so I wouldn't move the camera by pressing the shutter.

I was playing with shutter speeds of 2-5 seconds when the train wasn't moving. I liked this exposure because with f/10 I could get enough depth of field to get most of the image in focus. A shorter shutter speed would mean I'd have to open the aperture up (e.g. f/8 or f/5.6) and therefore less depth of field.

After about 8 minutes they pulled forward a bit to spot the second half of the train at the platform.

Amtrak baggage car and Superliners in Fargo

That brought baggage car 61025 and the Superliners more into view.

After a few more minutes, they took off westward and that was the end of that train.

I walked around to get to the 4th Street North crossing to shoot the eastbound. On the way, I stopped to take a decent photo of the old Great Northern station. She's a beauty!

Ex Great Northern train station in Fargo

On to the other Empire Builder...

The Eastbound

Long exposure of the Amtrak Empire Builder arriving in Fargo, North Dakota

I shot a long exposure of the Empire Builder's arrival while recording video on my iPhone. This was a 15 second, f/13 exposure.

The train's head end stopped well across 4th Street in an inaccessible location. I elected to stay put and take a few photos of the Superliners gleaming in the available light. See lead photo for a black and white view of the Superliners.

Superliners on the move

They did a re-positioning move here too, so I took a brief photo of the move. The green lights on the side seem to indicate that the doors are closed. I saw them turn red for a bit while the cars were at the platform.

I shot video of their arrival but not of the departure.

Amtrak Video

I combined both trains into one video.

Postscript

After the other Empire Builder left, I packed up and went back to my hotel to catch a few hours of sleep before going back out to railfan again. But that's another story.

I'm glad I made the effort to see the Amtrak trains. I'm not sure if I'll do that on every trip! I think I'll have to get out in Grand Forks to see the trains there, even though the Amtrak station in Grand Forks is much more modest than Fargo's.

Other Amtrak Posts

• Amtrak in Albany
• The Coast Starlight

North Dakota's High Line Bridge

The High Line Bridge, North Dakota

Recently I had the opportunity to see the High Line Bridge in North Dakota. This bridge is a very long steel bridge and resembles other bridges I have seen such as the Salmon River viaduct in New Brunswick and the Lethbridge High Level Bridge. This bridge is also called the Hi Line Bridge.

The High Line bridge is in Valley City, ND near mile 65 of the BNSF Jamestown subdivision, a secondary main line running west of Fargo. It sees a few trains a day over it, and probably a train or two under it from the CP line that ducks under the eastern end of the bridge.

Panorama view of the High Line Bridge in North Dakota (west=left)

This bridge was built by the Northern Pacific Railroad to avoid steep grades in and out of the Sheyenne River valley. The bridge was completed in 1908 and was important for traffic in both World Wars.

The bridge is 3,860 feet (1,180m) long and towers 162 feet (49m) above the Sheyenne River. It is just a few feet shorter than the Salmon River trestle and 33 feet shorter. The High Line bridge has 61 spans.

The bridge appears to have been built to carry two separate tracks. I am not sure if it ever had two tracks but it only has one track now.

A lot of steelwork in the High Line Bridge

The nearby Chautauqua Park is a good place to observe the bridge from. All of the wide angle photos in this post were taken from there.

Wide angle view of the BNSF High Line Bridge

I apologize for the distortion in the wide angle / panorama views. I used the iPhone 6 panorama function and it definitely puts a hump in the middle of the bridge that is just not there.

Sadly no trains came along in the short time that I was near the bridge. Perhaps next time!

More information:

• Wikipedia
• North Dakota Tourism
• Ghosts of North Dakota

Grand Forks Action

Cleaning the Switch Points

After my little trip to Grafton, North Dakota, I returned to Grand Forks and spent an hour looking around. My first stop was North Washington Street and the industrial locomotives at Gavilon Grain. I photographed these back in April 2011 and I won't repeat the photos here - the Con Agra GP7 and the Peavey SW7 are both still there and look the same.

Next I went to the North Dakota Mill, a massive facility. Fortunately I spotted a BNSF locomotive working there. BNSF 2256 was switching on the north end of the facility. I believe this was being operated via remote control by the gentleman pictured above, cleaning out switch points. The wind was blowing pretty hard and there was a lot of blowing snow.

BNSF 2256 at North Dakota Mills

I took a little video of the locomotive running light over a crossing.


I saw BNSF 2256 in Grand Forks back in 2011. After that, I headed south down Washington to BNSF's yard.

BNSF 3004 was working in the yard in the background. BNSF 1546 and BNSF 2834 were parked near the main building. The main excitement for me, though, was a trio of foreign power.

CEFX 6006

SOO! Well, not any more, but clearly it was a SOO engine.

PRLX 8136

Clearly an ex BN unit!

CSX 7541

Finally, a non-patched engine!

Those were fun to see in a BNSF yard.

There was one locomotive over by the turntable, BNSF 4606, surrounded by some maintenance-of-way equipment.

BNSF 4606

I spotted a pair of Burlington Northern snowplows - BN 972501 and 972510, both of which I spotted back in April 2011.

I was almost out of time, so I headed west on Gateway Drive to get back to the interstate. I noticed a train was heading out of the yard so I resolved to grab it before heading back to the hotel. I got ahead of it, and after a bit of driving to find a safe place to park, I ran back to the tracks. Fortunately the train was heading directly west, rather than going south toward Fargo!

A bit of blowing snow...

I was surprised to see BNSF 3134 and BNSF 2259, the very same locomotives I saw in Drayton on the previous day. The weather wasn't so nice this day!

BNSF 3134 in the snow

They rolled on past me, with a wave from the engineer. Let's just say visibility was restricted...

Grain cars in the snow

On Monday (Louis Riel Day) we headed back north to the US border. At Drayton I photographed BNSF 4382, BNSF 5679 and BNSF 4438. We crossed the border and I kept an eye out for CN 532/533. There was nothing at Emerson but as we drove through the blowing snow, I kept looking and eventually I spotted a train just south of Morris. I pulled over, hoping to get a great action shot in the blowing snow... only to realize they weren't moving. I drove closer and found CN 2640 and CN 2508 with a medium sized train.

CN 2640 parked south of Morris, MB

I don't think there was a crew on board.

That was the end of our Grand Forks adventure. Thanks for reading!

Further reading:

• Part 1 of this trip report
• Grand Forks, February 2014
• Grand Forks, March 2011 (and part 2)
• Grand Forks, February 2010

Grafton Bound

BNSF at Drayton, North Dakota

This past weekend my family went to Grand Forks, North Dakota just to get out of the city for a while. On the way down on Saturday afternoon, I caught BNSF 2259 and BNSF 3134 at the American Crystal Sugar Factory in Drayton. They process sugar beets here, much like Manitoba Sugar used to do in Winnipeg. There are always lots of rail cars at the Drayton facility and usually a few BNSF locomotives around. The plant uses a Trackmobile to move their cars.

We enjoyed the Holiday Inn Express and visited the many stores of the area. I negotiated a little railfan time for Sunday morning, and after a quick (free) breakfast I headed out before the official sunrise. It was a gray day.

I had thought of heading south toward Fargo to catch some mainline BNSF action, but some railfans had mentioned Grafton as a place to go. I didn't really know why, other than the several grain elevators in town, but I decided to go see what the fuss was about. I headed out on the 29 up to Manvel, home of a large grey grain elevator.

A gray elevator for a gray day.

I drove around the town for a bit and found a few interesting sights. There are two very old outside-braced boxcars in someone's backyard.

Like many small Canadian towns, the Legion can be counted on for a little entertainment of the liquid kind.

This long low building was (is?) the Manvel Bean Company.

Manvel is mile 12.4 on the BNSF Glasston subdivision, which runs between Grand Forks and just south of Grafton.

So that was Manvel. I headed north on the 81 and came across the tiny town of Ardoch. This town features a couple of interesting items. The Northern Plains Railroad crosses BNSF here, there's another sugar beet facility here, but what really attracted me was this wonderful twinned grain elevator.

This belonged to the Mondry Grain Company. I haven't found any information on that company.

It looks like it was patched at one point. The siding is long gone. I like the garage door covering the driveway.

I'd like to come back sometime in better weather to explore this elevator. It was bitterly cold with the wind blowing so I didn't linger very long. I did spot the old city hall.

Ardoch City Hall

The interchange with the Northern Plains Railroad is apparently a couple of tracks, one of which had some BNSF grain cars and boxcars. It seems it was a GN-SOO diamond "back in the day".

The next town north on the 81 is Minto, North Dakota. This is a larger town with a few elevators.

I liked the W.L.A. Grain Company elevator.

There is a spur to a potato plant but the bridge is quite twisted - I'm guessing from a flood.

I carried on north to Grafton. It's the north end of the BNSF Glasston Subdivision and the south end of the BNSF Drayton Subdivision. It also meets the Dakota Northern Railroad here. The DN took over the rest of the Glasston subdivision as well as the Walhalla subdivision.

The Dakota Northern's facilities in Grafton are quite modest.

I was hoping to see an engine, but nothing was around except this snowplow.

MNN 999 is owned by the Minnesota Northern Railroad, whose co-owners also own the Dakota Northern.

I headed down Stephen Avenue, a very well-named road.

There is a large grain elevator here, I am guessing this is Farmer's Co-Op #1.

Note the huge bins and annexes. This elevator has a lot of capacity!

In the distance you can see Farmer's Co-Op #2, a much smaller elevator.

On a nearby street is Farmer's Co-Op #3.

Its shape is reminiscent of the Paterson grain elevators in Manitoba.

Grafton seems like a really nice small town.

BNSF has a little maintenance depot here but not much else.

I went north a few miles and found that the remainder of the Glasston subdivison is being used for car storage... tank cars in fact.

I didn't have time to go up the Dakota Northern's Walhalla subdivision but I'd like to - there are a number of grain elevators on that line.

So that was Grafton.

I headed back to Grand Forks to check out the BNSF action at the yard... more to come in another post!

PS if you have a few minutes, why not check out some great railfan blogs like The Beachburg Sub, Trackside Treasure, the CP Rail Manitoba and Minnesota Subdivision, Prince Street Terminal, and Rolly Martin Country?

A Few Hours Around Grand Forks

My family traveled to Grand Forks, North Dakota a couple of weekends ago for a little shopping and to get away for a bit. As we approached the border crossing at Emerson, Manitoba, I saw a CN train at the Letellier grain elevator with a big engine (Dash-9?) and a GP38 for power. Just north of the border was another train with a single BNSF engine on it. BNSF has started running its power straight through into Manitoba on occasion.. more on that in another post.

On the morning of February 16, I went out for a couple of hours of railfanning. I went to the yard first to see what was around. On the west end, orange remote control engine BNSF 1730 was working the yard while green BNSF 2921 (GP39E) and 2082 (GP38-2) idled patiently.


I saw a train rolling east through the yard up to the shop. It had BNSF 4163 (C44-9W), BNSF 7499 (ES44DC), BNSF 1531 (GP28M), and old friend BNSF 3028 (GP40E) as the fourth engine.




BNSF 3028 was a familiar sight in Winnipeg for quite a while, as the BNSF Manitoba power.

Over by the turntable, three engines were arrayed quite nicely for viewing from the sidewalk. BNSF 3195 (GP50), BNSF 8168 (SD60M), and BNSF 1885 (SD40-2) provided a nice variety.


After surveying the yard, I headed back west to the Amtrak station and saw a grain train disappearing down the line toward Fargo, and headlights to the west... what to do, what to do. I decided to go shoot the eastbound train. BNSF 962 was on the point.


They were poking along so it was easy to shoot them twice.


Right after that, I headed down I-29 to try to catch up to the southbound freight train.Mile after mile went by and I finally caught sight of the tail end near Buxton and they went under the I-29 overpass just before I reached it. Too bad - that would have been a nice spot. I carried on to Mayville but I wasn't far enough ahead to take the exit, so I carried on to Hillsboro. I exited there and drove straight to the grain elevator to set up the shot. Soon enough BNSF 949 (in Santa Fe livery!) and NS 8140 came through this pretty little town.


Love those thoroughbred engines!


I took a few more photos of the grain elevators in town, as well as caboose BN 11711 on display, then headed back north on I-29 toward Grand Forks. I saw a train coming south and it was the same train I saw approaching Grand Forks! Here it is again... BNSF 962, BNSF 9850 and BNSF 2284 were the power.


I always enjoy railfanning in North Dakota.