Something old, something new, something yellow, something not yellow
When I came across the Ross Island bridge today, I saw what I thought was a locomotive headlight on the SPUP mainline through east Portland. I thought it might be an Amtrak train, so I wasn't particularly surprised when I reached Haig St. and found nothing except a pair of SD70Ms at the head of a train getting ready to move north.
I started to head south to the Toonerville bridge to see if there was anything interesting happening in the yard, but I thought I heard something other than the whine whinge whinge whine of the SD70s. I turned back around and listened very carefully, and heard a fairly subdued tooting coming from the direction of the 11th street crossing. This was worth a delay, so I set up a good photo spot and waited for whatever it was to come into view.
It wasn't Amtrak, but it was a brace of 4 BN/SF GP38-2s, pulling the afternoon transfer freight down to Brooklyn Yard. The first three GP38s were in the traditonal Burlington Northern forest green, but the last unit was in the new drug-induced orange scheme. And, judging from the way everything including the trucks was shining, this was #3126's first trip after coming out of the paint shop.
After the transfer freight clanked on by, I walked down to the Toonerville bridge and spotted another Yellow Menace freight parked in thre yard (a couple of SD40-2s and what was probably a tunnel motor, all in YM colors), but they were in a position which didn't leave much room for photography. And they were yellow, which doesn't have the thrill of spotting a set of BN locomotives, so I didn't go out of my way to find a good camera angle.
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Nice shot of 3126… I’m surprised she’s still clean. That unit has actually been around the area for about a month now (mainly on garbage trains).