At 9:50, a westbound coal empty came through, with OWY 9067 and BN 50?? pulling NCUX cars. They were followed fairly closely by another empty, of CWEX gons, that came through the station at 10:05. On the point were BNSF 9825 and 9944.
I'd heard on the radio that a manifest was to be relieved at Osceola, and just before 11:00 a crew van arrived. The train rolled slowly up to the depot at 11:07 with BN 2086 and a really tired looking second unit, Metro North 802. The engineer leaving the train commented, "Slow, slow. 5000 ton and two old dogs..." They rolled again at 11:12, with plans to try to stay out of the way of intermodal 60 and the following passenger train.
Amtrak finally arrived just before midnight with a GeeP, SF 3409, in front of the two GEnesis units, 100 and 40. I heard from my passenger that they'd had trouble even before reaching Galesburg and had spent a couple of hours before getting on the move westward again.
An "Okay on the north side..." message on the scanner tipped us off that we'd be seeing an eastbound shortly. Sure enough in less than 10 minutes a coal load arrived behind BN 9223, OWY 9070 and KCS 719. This train had FSTX hoppers.
After the coal load, a long lull ensued. On the radio, we heard loads being sent out of Creston and trains being held at Halpin to follow Amtrak. With the CZ just east of town, the first load arrived at Osceola at 9:38, GEAX gondolas, behind BN 9418 and BNSF 9795.
Amtrak passengers board westbound trains from the north side of the double track, so they were hurried across the tracks ahead of the load. The CZ pulled in just a few minutes behind schedule. In the silver train tonight:
Although no trains were moving, there was a large collection of power near the engine service facility today. We spotted the following locos:
CN (GTW) 5934
SP 8321
UP 5546, 2458, 3023, 3041, 3487 and 9463
CNW 4600 and 4331 were doing the switching at the west end.
Meanwhile, at the east end of the yard, an eastbound Iowa Interstate train was making a pickup and preparing to leave along the old Rock Island route. It had an interesting collection of IAIS locos, in assorted paint schemes:
