Jake Miille Photography

@FunWithSeth7 Ай бұрын

Fakebonnet Trailing Second H1 Trailing Third And Warbonnet Mid DPu

@mauricedelarosa6083 2 ай бұрын

Here’s a fun story: I attended Cal Poly SLO in the mid 90’s and lived on a sliver of land sandwiched between Highway 1 and the California Men’s Colony. I rented a room in a converted barn (I lived upstairs in the hay loft). From my window I could see the trains going up or coming down on the Horseshoe Bend. I grew up loving trains, so this was an awesome place to live. Parking on campus was expensive and you had to get to campus an hour before your class in order to have enough time to find a parking spot and then walk to class (Cal Poly was a big campus). So, it just made sense to ride my bike as I lived only a couple of miles north of campus. But there was a huge hill just before my ‘house’ and I would end up drenched in sweat trying to climb that hill just before I got home. So both driving and riding my bike was kind of a PITA. But I realized that the tracks would be limited to a 1.5% grade so I scouted it out and started riding home from school along the tracks, since they ran right past campus. The two biggest problems were the Stenner Creek Bridge and the possibility of getting creamed by the helper engines returning from helping freight trains up Cuesta Grade. Even though the bridge was ~80 feet high and 930 feet long, I got comfortable riding my bike across the bridge. But the helper engines were very stealthy because there were no RR crossings anywhere along the route so they didn’t have to blast their horns and you didn’t hear their engines because they were idling as the locomotives easily coasted downhill back into SLO. There was also lots of terrain as you approached the Horseshoe so you didn’t have a direct line of site to observe the helpers returning - only a couple of places where you could catch a glimpse of them returning. I ran that route for ~3 years and only got surprised by the helpers once. I always wondered how scary it would be if I was caught on the bridge with a freight train coming down the grade. You could hear freighters for miles coming out of SLO because the engines were working hard pulling the load uphill, so you could easily avoid getting caught. But those trains coming downhill were much harder to hear. Fun memories!

@mauricedelarosa6083 2 ай бұрын

Here’s a fun story: I attended Cal Poly SLO in the mid 90’s and lived on a sliver of land sandwiched between Highway 1 and the California Men’s Colony. I rented a room in a converted barn (I lived upstairs in the hay loft). From my window I could see the trains going up or coming down on the Horseshoe Bend. I grew up loving trains, so this was an awesome place to live. Parking on campus was expensive and you had to get to campus an hour before your class in order to have enough time to find a parking spot and then walk to class (Cal Poly was a big campus). So, it just made sense to ride my bike as I lived only a couple of miles north of campus. But there was a huge hill just before my ‘house’ and I would end up drenched in sweat trying to climb that hill just before I got home. So both driving and riding my bike was kind of a PITA. But I realized that the tracks would be limited to a 1.5% grade so I scouted it out and started riding home from school along the tracks, since they ran right past campus. The two biggest problems were the Stenner Creek Bridge and the possibility of getting creamed by the helper engines returning from helping freight trains up Cuesta Grade. Even though the bridge was ~80 feet high and 930 feet long, I got comfortable riding my bike across the bridge. But the helper engines were very stealthy because there were no RR crossings anywhere along the route so they didn’t have to blast their horns and you didn’t hear their engines because they were idling as the locomotives easily coasted downhill back into SLO. There was also lots of terrain as you approached the Horseshoe so you didn’t have a direct line of site to observe the helpers returning - only a couple of places where you could catch a glimpse of them returning. I ran that route for ~3 years and only got surprised by the helpers once. I always wondered how scary it would be if I was caught on the bridge with a freight train coming down the grade. You could hear freighters for miles coming out of SLO because the engines were working hard pulling the load uphill, so you could easily avoid getting caught. But those trains coming downhill were much harder to hear. Fun memories!