Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

I like that bell and im diggin that cab car at the front of the train

Those former F40 locomotive frames are pretty cool, the used to be the regular power for many years as powered units until around 1997. What was really neat, was just a few weeks ago when there was a derailment near Waterloo, Indiana and the NS ran the Amtrak Lakeshore and Capitol Limited through Michigan. Well, it needed to be led by an ITCS (cab signals) equipped unit through, MI to run on the high speed portion of track West of Kalamazoo. Enter the former F40 NPCU, that same unit in this video 90225 to pull two big combined long distance trains! I am betting that this rare catch was the first time in the recent Amtrak era that the good old face of the F40 has got to be on the point of a long distance Amtrak train, since none of them are powered anymore, and none of the long distance trains operate push pull style!



Thanks for the comments. We have called the NPCU's cabbages in Michigan for a long time, since they were originally meant to be cab / baggage units, hence the rolling door on the side.

Mike

MikeRXR wrote:

I like that bell and im diggin that cab car at the front of the train

Those former F40 locomotive frames are pretty cool, the used to be the regular power for many years as powered units until around 1997. What was really neat, was just a few weeks ago when there was a derailment near Waterloo, Indiana and the NS ran the Amtrak Lakeshore and Capitol Limited through Michigan. Well, it needed to be led by an ITCS (cab signals) equipped unit through, MI to run on the high speed portion of track West of Kalamazoo. Enter the former F40 NPCU, that same unit in this video 90225 to pull two big combined long distance trains! I am betting that this rare catch was the first time in the recent Amtrak era that the good old face of the F40 has got to be on the point of a long distance Amtrak train, since none of them are powered anymore, and none of the long distance trains operate push pull style!



Thanks for the comments. We have called the NPCU's cabbages in Michigan for a long time, since they were originally meant to be cab / baggage units, hence the rolling door on the side.

Mike

A few of the Lincoln Service trains i saw in illinois over the summer had Cabbages on them, the only one that ran during daylight was train #302 which passed through Auburn at about 8:30 AM. Here are some of my pictures i took.

http://cnfan1.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1729476
http://cnfan1.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1729536
http://cnfan1.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1729458
http://cnfan1.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1729532
http://cnfan1.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1729540

Great shots, you got the bulk of the Michigan cabbages there for sure, just missing 90219 which had pretty good old phase III (3 stripe) paint. I like how you take side shots, that really shows how the units are configured, I neglect to do that at times, probably because they are moving so fast, I need to get some shots like that. Thanks for sharing.

I actually did see 90219 on train 305 twice, because of the lateness of the train (9:00pm at the earliest) and an early town curfew, i couldnt get pictures.

AndyWS wrote:

MikeRXR wrote:I fell and broke my left foot right before taking the video, I was barely able to stand the camera up and shoot it last second. Still have not healed from that. lol

You must have really wanted that video!

Once I ran outside to race a train to a crossing for a video and I have to go down stairs and flew above them and landed on my face, yet I still got the video.

Has anyone tried messing with the sound clip of the Safetran Type 1 E-Bell? If you use a program like Audacity, you can change the pitch and speed of the bell and can really make it sound like mechanicals!

I have Nero 10 WaveEditor. I can mess around with it, as well as the other bells. I can make a GS type 1 sound like a Safetran type 3.

You can get an earful of this Safetran Type 1 beginning at about 7:42 into this video:

I probably should try this weekend to catch a train at this crossing:

http://www.rxrsignals.net/Illinois/L-Q/Peotone/Peotone/

Just a matter of time.

Cheers,
Joshua

SantaFebuff wrote:I probably should try this weekend to catch a train at this crossing:

http://www.rxrsignals.net/Illinois/L-Q/Peotone/Peotone/

Just a matter of time.

Cheers,
Joshua

40 trains aday shouldn't be that hard
also those cabbage F40PH's sure beat real cabcars