Brand-New B-Boats at Beaumont – Part 2

Continued from below: Brand-New B-Boats at Beaumont

Railfan ethical dilemma: you’re an hour late for work and you’re 30 miles away from your job but you encountered a train with brand-new power that you’d like to chase.

What would you do?  My choice was to chase the train, of course! Your job will still be there (hopefully), but you get one chance at the train.

So I take off east to get ahead of the LAMFF.  For reasons that I don’t recall, I wasn’t able to set up another shot until Cabazon, some 16 miles east of my last shot.

SSW 8043 with the LAMFF at Cabazon, CA on Aug. 5, 1988

By this point the sun had gotten a bit high, so maybe one more shot and off to work I would go.

The LAMFF through Mons CA on Aug. 5, 1988

The track curved enough to where the sun favored the engineer’s side of the train.  My car is on the other side of the track, so I was stuck until the train passed by. That’s wasn’t an issue, as this would be my last shot and I wasn’t in any particular hurry. I was only finally going to work….

P.S. – I just realized why I was so nonchalant about going to work. My move back to Texas was about a week after these photos, so I had already given notice. What were they going to do to me?