Today I was called for train LO11 (Wausau to Prentice) so in that case my day is already planned and all my other plans were now shot, oh well, welcome to the railroad life. So in that case, time to get all my gear packed up and everything all set and ready to go. I step outside and the cool brisk air took my breath away, boy she sure was a cool October fall morning. On my way to the yard I was wondering what kind of power I will have for todays run, could it be the Cadillacs aka SD45's or will it be one of the GP40's that we had around the area for a while.
I pull up to the yard and what's the first thing I see sitting by the office, 2 WC ex-SOO GP30's and the WC SD35 2500. I said to my self, great, this is going to be one fun ride up to Prentice, these things run like crap. And I knew the 2500 was for the local work around Wausau here, so I was stuck with these 2 clunkers, my first bet that these 2 units had no heat and would be one cold ride up.
I head into the yard office to pick up todays paper work to see what set outs and pick ups we have to make today, I see we have to make a stop in Brokaw, Tomahawk and Bradley. Was hoping to make 1 straight non stop run, but hey, we can never get that lucky.
We then head back out into the brisk cool air and walk over to our train that's already made up and sitting on the main line ready to be pulled out and head north. And when we walked up into the cab, what a shock, the cab was hot as can be, thank god the heaters worked, I take off my coat and slide the window open. And away we get ready to go.
With the conductor and I on board, air tests already done, we then notch out the throttle to 3 to get our train moving.
We slowly make our way thru Wausau and as soon as we reached the north end of town, we could start notching out our train to lift our tonnage up out of the river valley.
Coming into Brokaw we make our first stop before the road crossing to set out some OMYA Kaloin tankers and some empty boxcars in the small yard, they have there own switcher and crew that will switch these cars out later today.
We then couple back to our train and head to our next stop, Tomahawk, this is an easy stop as well, the first few cars will just be set out in the small yard and that's all.
