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Videos

Whitefish, MT to Pasco, WA - Trainhopping The Highline

514 views RanOutOnARail July 25 2018 10:47:39

Jonathan Wichter
Jonathan Wichter
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After watching a friend roll out on an eastbound Z-train, I headed to the field at the southeast side of the yard and sat down in the tall grass. My assumption was that most of the westbound priority intermodal from Chicago would start rolling into Whitefish sometime between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM. Since I had arrived two nights earlier in that general timeframe on the first to depart Cicero, the Z-CHCSSE; I felt it was safe to assume that the first IM would be Seattle bound. Throughout the night one train after another rolled in, the crew changed, and rolled out. There were a few general manifests but about ninety percent of the trains I saw that night were unit grain. It was painful trying to stay awake...it always is when you eat terrible food for weeks on end and lose any trace of a sleep pattern. I did everything I could to keep from falling asleep. I read, paced around, listened to music, ate about half of my supply of peanuts, paced around more, and at sometime around [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eutVLhI1fM&t=240s]4:00[/url] AM, I fell asleep. I awoke to the sound of a train rolling through the yard. Through the ambient light, I could just barely make out the silhouette of the train. Finally, an intermodal. I shouldered my pack and started to run across the field toward the tracks. UPS, FedEx, UPS trailers, Roadway trailers, was that all the 53's? The train wasn't slowing down, it was speeding up. About a minute later all I could see was the blinking EOT light mocking me as it sped off into the darkness. I'd been asleep for less than twenty minutes and I'd missed the hottest train on the line. Bummer.


I walked back to my waiting spot and sat down again. Having gone over 20 hours without sleep, I determined that I didn't care whether I was going to Seattle or Portland. I'd be on the next intermodal that rolled into Whitefish no matter what. For domestic stacks, I'd heard it was about a 3/4 chance that I'


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