Briggs, Sam, and two other workers sit outside the shop building. Judging by the short-sleeves that Sam and Briggs are wearing, it must be a nice day out!
Several vehicles sit outside, including two trucks used in maintenance. A third truck can be seen on the bridge, heading to Dale City to perform some line-side maintenance there.
A trencher sits on a lowboy trailer. Decades ago, telephone poles lined the right-of-way; today it's underground fiber optic cables! The trencher is also good for quickly re-cutting drainage ditches after storms. Whatever works!
A string of plastic pellet hoppers sit on a storage track in the yard. Post-Super Bowl traffic at Pete's Plastics is slow, but picks back up at the end of March ('March Madness', Easter, etc.).
James, the engine mechanic, has just started up 3163, as Mark Davis walks over to touch bases with him. Note the amount of soot in the exhaust when the engine first fires up -you can tell it's a diesel!
On a cold winter morning, a special crew gathers -the snowplow crew! X-11 has been overhauled and re-painted and is now ready to fight winter's wrath. And west of Hillsdale, the mountains have, indeed, seen the wrath, with several inches and counting. And, of course, the snow is coming this way! Fortunately, the snowplow crew is well versed in the art -and the agony- of plowing; the two men on the ground (without vests) and Earl on 3163 each have 20+ years of experience fighting snow in this area!
As always, ongoing trackwork results in tie replacements. Old, but reliable, the Hillsdale tractor-trailer carries a load of banded stacks of recently replaced ties. Still in good shape, they will be sold to the local garden supply center, who will then sell them to locals for their various landscaping projects; one local farmer is using them to build a small bridge over a creek on his property!
Still more salvaged ties are loaded on retired bulkhead flatcars. These, too, will be sold for re-use else-where. As for the flatcars now in MOW service, more on them later...
