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| Major Snow Event; Sunday, April 6, 2008 |
| With a forecast calling for snow that had the possibility to be heavy at times, I was glued to the scanner, just waiting for something to pop to life. After listening for hours and hearing nothing, I knew something would have to eventually move through. As Saturday turned to Sunday the snow began to fall, by 03:30hrs we had received over a foot of heavy wet snow. This was just the start of what was to come. With advanced warning that the M-SUPMIN would be heading west in the mid afternoon, I made the dangerous trip to Grand Rapids to photograph and film the train's adventure in the snow. The first shots were grabbed at Deer River (below left). Next stop was just west of Ball Club (below center, right). |
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| The trip to grand Rapids wasn't as bad as the way back. There were a few cars in the ditch and trees limbs that had fallen under the weight of the snow. The crew was talking to the dispatcher and advised him of the weather they had encountered and had to slow the train down due to visibility. The further west I traveled the weather got worse and the snow got heavier and deeper. Between Ball Club and Bena there were numerous spots in the road where traffic was funneled into one lane because the snow was pulling down many large trees in the Chippewa National Forest. The road became so poor that traffic was having a hard time maintaining speeds of 20MPH. The good news was, the train was also and had slowed to a crawl. This allowed me to get ahead of the M-SUPMIN before Bena again. I snapped a series of photos as the train busted through the County Road 8 grade (below left, center, right). |
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| While warming up and driving on highway 2 I was listening to the dispatcher talk to the crew. They were trying to describe the situation to the dispatcher that seemed to have a hard time believing the magnitude of the snow. The train had now slowed to a blistering 15MPH and was having a hard time sustaining their speed. The dispatcher told them to take their time and don't push it too hard. Just as the dispatcher was getting ready to clear the radio when the crew said, "Hey dispatcher, we got something for ya?" He replied and inquired as to what it was. The crew chuckled and said, "If you can believe this, there is a railfan out here chasing us." The dispatcher busted out laughing and said, "Well thats good, you guys will be on a calender somewhere." Even though I was going 20MPH on highway 2 I still passed the train one more time and was able to shot him one more time. The snow was coming down so heavy at this point I was having issues of accumulations sticking to me and my cameras. I set up the video camera to shoot the train passing but the snow was so hevay you couldn't even see the train. The horn was also so distorted and muffled from the blankets of snow, it created a very surreal experience at Schley, but I still shot photos (below left, center). |
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| I had my heart set on shooting the M-SUPMIN at the Pike Bay Loop Road just east of Cass Lake where the tracks make a nice decend from Cuba Hill and you can normally see a great distance down the tracks. Because traffic had slowed to 5-10MPH I missed the train at this crossing and had to make a mad dash to Cass Lake where it sounded like they were putting the train in the yard. Just as I got the the east end of the yard, I could see the train approaching. There was also a switch tender working to clear the switches so they could align it for the yard. I nearly got the big 4x4 Dodge Ram stuck in the tremendous snowfall (below left). With the switches still not cleared, the crew got off and assited in clearing the snow. Before they could even get off the train they had to dig their way out of the cab with their broom and shovel (below center). Once down they helped clear the switches (below right). |
| "If you can believe this, there is a railfan out here chasing us..." ~ M-SUPMIN crew |
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| Listening to the crew on the radio, they were making the best of the situation they could. They sounded friendly so I approached them as they were working. The conductor waved and told me I needed to talk to the engineer as he wanted his picture taken by the train. After a job like that, how could I refuse. Standing proudly at the engine (above left) and clearing the snow (above center). While they worked on clearing the switch, I grabbed one more shot of the train before heading back to the truck. As you can tell in the shot above, the BNSF truck was mighty stuck in the snow. I was more lucky and was able to get out and back to the main road. The engineer said they were waiting for the M-MINSUP that was due to Cass Lake in a half hour. The two trains were going to swap crews and take the trains back the opposite directions. I figured they would be encountering the same weather to the west so I had a few minutes to get some clean cloths on and charge up the camera batteries that were running a little low. No sooner did I get that done when another railfan in Bemidji alerted me by text message it had already passed and was bearing down on Cass Lake. |
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| Once I got back to the truck, it was a long way to back up to get to the main road. I heard the crews talking to each other and they were setting up to do a mainline swap at the Cass Lake Station Sign. I knew if I wanted to shoot the trains meet in Cass Lake I would have to get their as quickly as I could. By this time, that meant 15MPH on highway 2 and an even slower run on highway 371. I got to the crossing just as the lights started to flash and the gates lowered. I swerved into the BNSF parking lot and jumped out. I had only a couple seconds to adjust my camera for the ever changing lighting I had been dealing with. The remaining photos are all at the Station Sign Cass Lake except for the bottom center and bottom right. These two photos were taken on the east end of the yard and the last train I would photograph on this day. The crew waved as the went by, as they started their next epic adventure to Superior. |
| After a frantic dash to the truck again and trying to gather all my tools, I ended up burning two minutes clearing the truck of several additional inches of snow. Traffic on highway 2 was down to almost nothing as the plows had given up the battle and let the snow pile high. I could hear the M-MINSUP talking to the M-SUPMIN. Both crews were in disbelief at the amount of snow that had fallen in Cass Lake. The M-MINSUP crew said, "I've never seen anything like this in my life, nothing this heavy or this much." He got a response that proclaimed only once in his life has he seen snow like this, near Aberdeen (SD) that a train was actually stuck in the snow. The other crew was quick to remind them that those were snow drifts and accumulations over the winter and this was one storm in one day. The road I decided to shoot at was just into Hubbard County in Farden Township. The road had obviously not been plowed but I decided to test the limits of the 4x4 and made a run at it. I came very close to getting the truck stuck when I had snow fly over the top of the hood and cover the windshield (below left). Knowing I would likely miss the train if I cleared it off and tried to go further, I just parked there and trudged through the nearly waste deep snow to the crossing. I made it to the crossing just in time to grab the first shot of the M-MINSUP busting through the tree line (below right). |
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| "I've never seen anything like this in my life, nothing this heavy or this much..." ~ M-MINSUP crew |
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| Please enjoy the video on the left. It was taken while on this adventure. The snow can really be felt and heard in the video, an element photographs omit. ~ Chris |
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