Rocky Run North on the Railroad

Here's the same scene, as seen from a 20-foot pole camera. It's easy to find trains waiting here. This one has a lot of gray sand hoppers. It probably came from north western Wisconsin,. Although, Taylor sand can come through here via Junction City, but I would expect that to move through during the night.

It's mile 252.8. Looking southeast toward Stevens Point. The highway is the former US 10, now a county road, since the 4-lane was built elsewhere 5 years ago.

Here's something I never saw before, the word SIDING and MAIN are stencilled on the crossing.
That might be a handy thing to do on a model railroad so operators know where they are at,
and to keep track of the wiring.

Then I went to Deer Lane, a few miles further west. I hadn't been there in 5 years. I see last year's work to extend the Rocky Run siding, it wasn't this close to the road crossing before. This is Rocky Run North. There's a lot of stuff in the view below (from a quadcopter, or drone, for people that don't differentiate toys from military equipment) Deer Lane is a gravel town road that used to cross the track in the distance, then it was re-routed to this location a quarter mile further west. Years ago, this area had just one track, and the north end of Rocky Run siding was somewhere south of here, out of sight. The Google Maps aerial view this year shows something a year or 2 older, when the siding was extended and the original Deer Lane crossed both tracks. And that would have been a nuisance to cross if a train was parked. Now there's a sweeping curve in the town road to get west of the switch, and the woods has been cleared for the safety vision triangles. Vision is a good idea here, that's a high-speed switch and trains don't slow down.

There's crossing gates, track signals, maybe an RFID scanner (is that how they keep track of engines passing?) a car number scanner, and is the hot box detector here, too? And then a heated and air blown power switch. The hill crests just east of here. The east end of the siding is mile 252.8, the west end is 255.2, so that's over 2 miles of siding.

A west bound came roaring over Deer Lane. With a west wind this day, I could hear horns in the west, near Junction City. But I didn't hear any distant horns from the east, just a rumble and then the headlight popped over the hill. A gate and flashers is a lot of protection for a gravelled town road.

The head-end cars were 2-bay sand hoppers, and the rear was mixed freight.

I should show a web page of Junction City next week. .