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La Crosse and Onalaska trains

We took a trip to the Onalaska Omni-Center craft show
and to do some shopping in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

We also visited the Guadalupe Shrine and two other churches.

And it wasn't a rail fan trip, but I got some train pictures.
It's one of my favorite areas, with the trains and the Mississippi River.
The autumn colors were about 40% in mid-October.

Left, the viewing area at Grand Dad's Bluff.

The bluff park has two viewing areas. The morning fog in the valley is still burning off on an October Saturday. It seems like the valley has a 'haze' for 8 months of the year, making extreme telephoto work difficult.

Downtown La Crosse and the university area. The BNSF tracks cross the golf course at the bottom of the picture.

Looking far north up the valley, I see the marsh and can barely see the train yard.

Something of the train yard. The first big street is Griffith Avenue, and the next highway bridge is Grand Crossing. I think the string of green-ish rail cars is actually reflections from black oil tank cars.

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The ABC Hobby Shop on Caledonia street is closing.
(I was there in October 2014, but I don't know their final month.)
(they are not just moving, its closing)

I bought some 90-lb kite string, like I did two years ago.

Ex-Milw Road of La Crosse. The yard was full of 3-bay hoppers, I don't know if it was sand or grain traffic.

The tail end pusher DPU of what I suppose is an empty Columbia gen plant coal train.

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While the ladies were at the Onalaska Omni-Center craft show,
I flew my kites and camera over the ball field.

The wind was light and I figured it might be difficult because its a big valley.
The first kite didn't have enough lifting power, so I added a smaller kite at an aggressive angle.
(this is the first time I've done stacked kites in Wisconsin)
Sometimes the wind blew from the west, just 100 feet below where it came from the south.

And if you want to see kite aerial views from around the world, see
KAP on Flickr with thousands of pictures over the years.

A view of the river and fishermen gathering in the morning. From the ball field a quarter mile away, I couldn't see any of this, and thought I heard a train but I didn't hear any horn blowing for the crossings a mile north and south here. Southbound trains are going downgrade and slowing down for the yard and signals, they often pass with just a quiet 'whoosh'. . . . . That's double track mainline on the causeway, with black bundles of ties laying nearby.

A kite camera panoramic of 3 pictures of the BNSF between Brice Prairie and Onalaska. (with a picture stiching fault at the jog in the tracks, and in the horizon)

I marked this smaller picture to recognize the features. I think I have it correct that the un-used tree-grown curve is the original Burlington alignment. And I wonder what the fill was for at 90 degrees to it, the ?

And since I didn't get to capture a train on the kite picture and I wanted to show how pretty the BNSF colors are, I searched for an hour to dig up my pole camera picture from Spring of 2005. (how time flies, that was nine years ago. I thought I was there later than that.) I was standing on a narrow foot path worn on the old CB and Q right-of-way, and put the camera 30 feet above the brush to get a clear view.