Day 11: Flagstaff

Bit of a gray day today, not much sun and really cold, so didn't get much shooting done unfortunately. Went a short way out of town and set up camp waiting for the torrent of trains. Caught a west bound fairly shortly after with a warbonnet SD70 leading. Don't often see EMDs on the transcon, it is almost exclusively GE territory.

Heading towards Flagstaff, containers snaking away.

Then another west bound with a warbonnet on the point.

Then things ground to a halt. I could see the next train off in the distance, but it wasn't moving. 30 minutes passed and a westbound crossed it, then another 30 minutes and another WB crossing, and then finally it continued on its way.

West bound meets east bound and finally things start moving again.

As expected there was a bit of a backlog and a few came through in quick succession, but by then the sun had gone and it was getting pretty darn nippy.

Got some decent videos, at least with video the lighting isn't as important since you still have noise and motion as well.

Headed back into town and went to Home Depot, which is like Bunnings but about 10x the size. Bought some furnace filters for making model trees with since you'd be very hard pressed to find furnace filters in NZ. Spied a hobby shop not far from the motel only to find they were closed, despite the shop hours sign saying they should be open. That said, they didn't appear to have much train stuff anyway.

Went and watched the local doing some shunting at the Nestle Purina factory, yes that's right they make both chocolate and cat food on the same production line here in Flagstaff. The local had a Heritage-II paint scheme GP60M, a warbonnet GP60M, and a very tired looking warbonnet Dash-8 40BW. I was pleased to see the Dash-8 since I have a model of one, but wasn't aware they were still being used. Didn't watch for too long, the shunting was pretty slow and the wind chill was crazy.

Back to the motel, did some work but it was frustratingly slow because all my files are back in NZ. Walked to town to find some dinner but everything was almost closed, so walked back to motel and went to Pizza hut where I had a nice chat with the waitress about why buffalo wings are called buffalo wings when a) buffalo don't have wings, and b) buffalo wings don't come from buffalo. She was equally as confused as me having moved here from Germany at age 6 and even back then no one could explain it to her. So I'm none the wiser.

And that was about it for today. Fairly uneventful. No plans yet for tomorrow. As long as it isn't a gray day I'll be happy. Snow or sun, either is fine by me, just not this cold grey weather; if I wanted that I would've stayed back in Christchurch!