Saturday: evening walk

[OT from cottage renovations]

the many (as in: hundreds of) brush fires burning in northern California have put enough combustion particulates into the atmosphere to alter the quality of light, out into which an evening walk leads unsurprisingly if not inevitably in the direction of the rail yard. 

railroads are geographically distributed enterprises whose components tend to be large: rolling stock, trackwork, works of civil engineering.  even so, as with so many other subjects of visual interest my own attention is often drawn to the smaller components. 

(click through these thumbnails for higher resolution images)

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curvy bridge

a curvy concrete bridge of pleasingly outdated appearance carries Sierra Boulevard over the apex of the wye track from which the Valley Subdivision begins its run up to Dunsmuir. 

its cast railing fames the switch point quite nicely. 

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doing without

down in the yard is en excellent example of the art of doing without. 

SPMW 8207 was built in the days of the streamliners, relegated by design to the role of addding its oomph to a train lead by some other locomotive with a cab.  no smoothly rounded nose, no windows for looking ahead or waving out to the side: just a row of utilitarian portholes along the sides, the middle one of which was blanked out somewhere along the way. 

rust and grime streak the top and sides of this relic, but it's not one of those rusting pieces of junk that often accumulate around railroads, particularly the marginal carriers.  this booster unit was one of the select few spared the scrapper's torch by virtue of being repurposed to support the railroad's rotary snowplows, becoming a portable if not mobile external source of electric power and live steam. 

it doesn't happen often, but when the snow pack gets deep enough this unit is fired up and gets to work to help clear the drifts.  more than half a century after it was built and decades after its littermates were reduced to scrap metal, this survivor is not completely use-depleted. 

its story isn't over, not yet. 

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bonded joint

in the early dusk this joint between two pieces of rail is another small part of a larger story. 

the no. 1 main track carries plenty of trains whose passage has burnished the top of the head of the rail.  bond wires span the joint to maintain electrical connectivity: the railroad's signal system uses the rails as a train detector.  the ends of the rails are right next to one another (it's been a warm day) and an engineer or metallurgist (my father was both, having earned his Ph.D in the latter) can tell you about the wear patterns: metal is actually flowing from the very top of the rail to the outside, casting a visible shadow along the near edge of the bright section; and there's some battering on the faces of the rail at the joint.  at some point somebody is going to have to come along and pay some attention to this joint: track inspectors will spot it and maintainers will set it right. 

one can also look at past the layers of technical detail and maintenance liability to the visual aspect presented by the thing itself, as a detail capable of presenting its own aesthetic attraction. 

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waste heat

the station platform is located next to an absolute signal for eastbound movements.  sometimes one comes along and is obliged to stop until the dispatcher can turn it loose.  this provides passers-by with the opportunity for close-up views of motive power details not otherwise readily visible. 

locomotives generate an abundance of what is called waste heat.  it gets dissipated to the atmosphere through radiators whose function is enhanced by air forced through them with cooling fans.  where these ducts meet external surfaces the protective mesh gives a view right through the unit. 

GE


EMD

(  .. +1 ..  )

that waste heat doesn't always have somewhere to go, particularly inside tunnels and snowsheds.  high temperature exhaust gases can be tough on paint but the resulting alterations to the pattern, while not what the designers may have had in mind, can be quite a bit more interesting than the original. 

scorched

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light

headlights are required under FRA 49 CFR part 229.125 sub H, Railroad Locomotive Safety Standards. 

ditch light

as you can see from the above image, this locomotive is in compliance with the applicable regulation.  doesn't that make you feel better? 

headlight

this headlight reflects track, station platform and sky, also collecting in its reflector the setting sunlight. 

it's a bit of a trick picture, though.  no, I wasn't up there climbing on the locomotive to get the shot, instead the image was rotated with software to return earth and sky to their customary positions. 

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with the light gone and night setting in the show isn't over -- the railroad operates 24/7 -- but walktime yields to the need to take a pass (or two, or three or, in this case, more) through the day's sniffed packets in order to clean up the West Sacramento decoding mess. 

archway

on the way back is the distraction of architectural detail, its appearance changed when viewed under different light.