My neighborhood Groundhog showed up today. It was fun watching it foraging around by the creek and crawling all over some of the trees that grow over them.
So first of all, this picture is of my late cat Rocket and was captured almost 10 years ago. So, it obviously does not qualify for this thread.
But I was struck by the animal intensity in Stan's amazing shot and was immediately reminded of this. Believe me, the bunnies in my neighborhood lived in terror for years, haha.
The big choo-choo " Union Pacific Big Boy 4014" heading across the infamous Black Rock Desert, home of "Burning Man". This place is even more desolate than the northern end of Death Valley, and the "road", called Junga was so bad that I had to lower the pressures to about 18 PSI to prevent tire pops. I saw at least 3 "chasers" coming from Winnemucca that had blown at least one tire per vehicle. No services nor cell coverage for almost 100 miles... Anyway, these are the transit shots with it heading to Portola (CA) which I made it to on Wednesday, those shots coming a bit later...
These are a sample of the hundreds of photos I took on digital and film while 4014 was on display at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, CA. It was an absolutely wonderful event, perfect weather, and I "jailbroke" my 8-year old grandson out of school for the day for a real-world experience and history lesson. He was in "Seventh Heaven", as I was. The gentleman in the cab is Ed Dickens, the head of Union Pacific's Steam Operations; he is a mechanical engineer, train driver, and just a great personable guy in all honesty. I enjoyed a long conversation with him, and he talked one of his crewmembers into grabbing one of my cameras to get the front-facing shot of Big Boy for me, as the security around the train was pretty tight. Kudos and a tip of my engineers hat to the entire UP organization and the workers that made this all happen for many generations of train folks to enjoy...I will never forget this!
A slight sidetrack (no pun intended) on the subject of the Union Pacific 4014 - word is that it will be traveling across the country this year, to New York. I'm not sure the entire route is cast in stone yet, but if you're a train nut like me, you will want to make plans to travel to wherever it is slated to pass through if it's feasible.
Eastern Bluebirds
Anyway, these are the transit shots with it heading to Portola (CA) which I made it to on Wednesday, those shots coming a bit later...
