Random MN Railranning Pics

This month will be a little quiet on the modeling side. I just finished a work trip that had me going from Minneapolis to Vegas to L.A. to Portland to Atlanta and back to Minneapolis, and that was the easier half of the month. So I don't go too long without a post, I thought I would share some random shots I took last time I was home.
Independent Locomotive Service in Bethel is getting a new office, er... should I say depot? It looks like construction was well underway so hopefully the office staff can stretch their wings a little in this new building.

Down on the Minnesota Commercial the late January snow slowed down the Hugo Line a little. Here, some gondolas bound for Hugo are left on the run around track at Structural Wood Products in White Bear Lake. A crew would run them North another day. The three leased high-side gondolas are a nice change from the usual low side MNNR gons.

Up in Cambridge on Feb 3rd, congestion at Northtown Yard had sidings plugged all over the Twin Cities Division as trains couldn't be processed over the NTW hump fast enough. Here we can see the SB CP manifest passing an idle BNSF SUPNTW. CP SD30C-ECO #5017 passes INDR (CEFX) SD60 #6011.

Back down in Saint Paul, a BNSF Z Train just backed out of Midway Yard onto the main. A very clean BNSF ES44C4 #7183 and BNSF C44-9W #5468 prepare to depart for Chicago.

At the same time the Z train was getting ready a nice 3 pack of MNNR power was getting ready to take the cars for BNSF interchange from the MNNR "A" Yard over to NTW. MNNR SF30B #42, MNNR B39-8E #84 and MNNR B23-7 #43 were all looking great in their new colors.