Day 4

Well, today was the first real railfan day. As such, I'm going to put the rail pictures first and the non-rail pictures last. I won't post all 50+ digital rail pictures! Plus we took some slides and prints. The cameras were busy today.

This first picture is an empty grain train just east of Belgrade, MT. The train was led by BNSF (Burlington Northern and Santa Fe) #788 in the old Santa Fe war bonnet paint scheme. It's a unit train. That is to say, the whole train is just one product. These BNSF brown cars give these trains the nickname of earthworms.

We were actually scouting a little dirt road to see if it would be a good spot to shoot a train when this BNSF8733 led train surprised us. You can tell that the shot is a quick grab shot, but it's still pretty good. These are a bunch of old Santa Fe engines that have never been repainted, just re-lettered under the cab to say BNSF.

These are MRL (Montana Rail Link) "helpers" going back to Livingston, MT after having pushed (helped) a double stack train up over Bozeman Pass. The pass has up to 1.9 percent grade and many trains need help getting over the hump. The complete string from right to left are MRL 324, 259, 303, 322, and 316.

And the last rail picture of the day. This is MRL 403 on a "local". A local train is one which just services businesses in the area and doesn't travel great distances. This train comes down from Helena, MT to service the towns of Trident, Logan and Three Forks. It's seen here switching cars at Logan, MT.

Now for those of you who don't care for trains. This first shot of an old shack was in Logan. Nancy did a nice job of composing this shot by standing on top of Mike's father's Blazer.

There are a lot of buildings that could be called shacks in Wyoming and Montana. Nancy took this shot through the back window while the car was moving at about 60 MPH. Not bad.

We followed that local train mentioned above back to Trident, MT. This shot is of the Missouri River through Trident. The Missouri river starts about 7 miles from this spot and is actually flowing North at this point.

Last image of the day. Sorry, not a scenic one, but a trivia question. The yellow bumper sticker saying is from some movie. We can't remember what movie that it is. Do you?