September 2014 Railfan Trip - 3

Hi, We spent the night in Woodward, OK and then headed for another day on Curtis Hill.  Once again, I will present the photos in geographical order from west to east.  As a reminder, Curtis Hill is upgrade westbound.

Early in the morning the sun is on the north side of the track at the overpass west of Quinlan.  Here an eastbound stack train sprints down hill.

In the mid afternoon we photographed two westbound manifests crawling upgrade (above and below).  The train below was photographed a few minutes earlier at the overpass east of Quinlan.

This westbound train, carrying dried distillers grain, was really struggling at the Quinlan grade crossing.

Photographed from the overpass east of Quinlan an eastbound heads downgrade about 9:00 AM.

Two stack trains pass at the bridge east of Quinlan (above and below).

Later in the afternoon a manifest (this is the train seen above at the overpass west of Quinlan) works its way west.

CP Belva is the next access point east of the overpass east of Quinlan.  Early in the morning this tank train was waiting to head west.

We returned to Belva later in the day and found this westbound manifest waiting.  The train ahead was the dried distillers grains loads shown at Quinlan that was just crawling.

Soon an eastbound showed up and pulled to a stop west of the grade crossing.  I think he waited for a track inspector to clear up.  This was a train of dried distillers grain empties (above and below).  I am not

We found the cliffs east of Belva to be very interesting and returned there in the late morning to photograph a number of trains.  First we shot from the roads in the area (above and seven below).  The photo above is an experiment.  It was taken horizontally with a Nikon D300 and a lens at 400mm.  In processing the left 1/2 of the photo was cropped.  Comments would be appreciated.

After photographing from the road we hiked west about a 1/4 of a mile to a low hill along the tracks.  While walking in we were surprised by this eastbound stack train.  Eastbound trains tend to be both quiet and fast.

Having reached the hill we photographed an eastbound and

a westbound before leaving.

After leaving Curtis Hill we caught this westbound manifest (a third time) at Moorelant, OK.

Before heading for our overnight stop at Liberal, KS so we could have a second crack at the Cimarron Valley we located the Northwestern Oklahoma in Woodward.  This appears to be a Frack Sand unloading operation.  Three locomotives were on the property: two painted in the railroad's schemes and one for Larry's Truck and Electric.

Thanks for looking.