Spring Sampler

A few BTW's before the good stuff. In our family the saying was always "pudding". This dates back to the pre-Jello Instant Pudding days when Mom would cook pudding over the stove. It was never a guarantee. If she did it right, the mixture would cool and "set-up" into pudding. If done wrong, it would just stay a soupy mess and Mom would be pissed. So you see, the proof whether or not it was done right was in the "pudding". We're farm folk...not golfers.

Here's another old saying that is coming true..."womb to tomb". I'm combining a barley crop that I planted last spring. I'm filling a truck that I take each morning to my main employer, Conway Feed where I off load the grain. I then go inside the mill and turn that barley into cow feed which I pellet. About mid morning I hit the road to gather in grain orders...orders for feed that I made and will be delivered to those customers. Feed containing that barley. Womb to tomb...I'm really getting sick to seeing that barley!

Anyways...time for some train photos. If you look a few posts back, you'll see some shots taken during this past winter up on Stevens Pass. Here's a few taken this spring during the thaw.



Morning starts with the usual clouds hanging over Cowboy Mountain and a westbound "Z" popping out of the Cascade Tunnel.



Damaged goods left over from the snow battles; the ladder from one of the East Scenic signal masts, the the crossing sign at Merritt.




Here's two of an eastbound stack train. First we see it topping the pass at Berne, and then topping the final little climb out of the Merritt basin.















































This was definitely the winter that would not go away. Westbound contains bask in the spring sun as they thread the "slot" west of Merritt with a two set DPU helper. A few miles up the hill....the same train is nearly invisible behind the thick flakes of a late spring snow squall.




The final shot of a good day is of the conductor of our westbound stacker giving eastbound grain MT's a roll-by down at Skykomish.

Stay tuned..next up are the results of a quickie spring trip to Bozeman.