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| Hiking | 3.50 Miles |
225 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.50 Miles | | | |
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| 225 ft AEG | | | |
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| no partners | | | A month ago Deb came upon an article celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad’s completion. Union Pacific’s historic Big Boy steam locomotive No. 4014 a 4-8-4 configuration would be touring the Union Pacific system. That means it would depart Gila Bend at 12:45 and arrive at Casa Grande at 2:45 on Wed. 10/16/19. So we planned to close the biz and have a day off, because it could be cool at the Maricopa Mtns. in Oct. We watched the weather for a week and kept watching it rise to peak on Wed., 100 at Gila Bend. We parked at the cut through of the old roadbed which is also a known smuggling hangout and also not Deb's favorite place, since passing cars on SR-238 can't see our vehicle because of the height of the old roadbed. But alas it seems there are more train geeks parked there, so cool....not really. We wondered around for about an hour, enough to cook my girls. So we headed back to the truck to "chill". I went up to the mountain to wait like dozens of others for the train. It became apparent after awhile that it was way late and only getting hotter. After a couple of hours I went back to check on my family. While sitting in the "cool" truck suddenly Deb goes here it comes! It came so fast around the bend that I couldn't get my camera out fast enough and just like that it was gone. We quickly fired up the truck and went through the cut to jump onto SR-238 only to find a parking lot. It was like I-17 on Sun. I slid smoothly into line and noticed the driver behind me give a thumbs up. Pretty sure it was a thumb. Well no way are we going to get ahead of the train now, but wait, it pulled to a siding. This would be a photo chance! A thought shared by about a 100 others. It was awesome, I shot with the sun to my back and kept hearing the engineer through a bullhorn saying would the man in the blue shirt step back to safety. Then again would the man in the blue shirt get off the track because an eastbound train is coming through. After Deb and I watched the big locomotive depart we climbed into our truck and I said now I'm happy, but could you believe how many times they kept telling that guy in the blue shirt to back off. How could someone be so obsessive and obtuse at the same time. Yeah Deb says, hard to imagine. |
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