Friday 28 March 2014

Relocation to Auburn

Today we bade farewell to the bright lights and big (cold and windy) city of San Francisco and relocated to Auburn.

As always, it was never going to be a direct route, stopping off at Emeryville, Martinez, Davis, Sacramento,  Roseville and Newcastle. Each has it's own story to tell:

Emeryville - we arrived just as the California Zephyr was departing for Oakland, so we missed that one - only for it to turn up again about an hour later. The intention was to stay at Emeryville for only 45 minutes, but a Union Pacific freight turned up and got held up at a set of lights, giving us the opportunity to shoot down the road and film it as it crossed a grade crossing - we waited about 30 minutes before it finally turned up. Saw about 5 or 6 trains all up, only one freight though.

We did a wee bit of exploring down Christie Road in Martinez, only to see 2 BNSF freights pass us by as we were driving, to be followed by 30 minutes of nothing.

Davis was good for lunch - lots of places to eat - no trains though. Really nice town, very peaceful.

Sacramento encompassed the Cal State Railroad Museum and me adding a few more Blu-rays to my collection...ooops.

Roseville yard was all it was meant to be, but the light for photography was pretty bad. High cloud meant poor backlight and loss of colour and detail.

I reckoned we could beat a departing freight to the Newcastle tunnel and so we tried, and succeeded - only to realise the train sitting at the lights wasn't the one we saw at Roseville - it hadn't even turned up yet, so we got two shots at the tunnel just as it was getting dark. We also saw a guy sitting at the tunnel mouth, who then decided to take a walk though it. Unsure how he fared as he went in just before the train did - silly boy.

Checked in to Auburn Motel 6 without a hitch - tidy room, but the beds resemble a something between the kitchen bench and a slab of concrete.

What we get up to tomorrow depends entirely on the amount of snow that falls on Donner Pass tonight.

Photos below.


Emeryville

Emeryville


Sacramento

Sacramento

Roseville

Roseville

No comments:

Post a Comment