Thanks Bernie, I came back home yesterday. I went out on Monday starting at Willmar Yard, shot NS and an old CSX engine lashed up to BNSF power and caught the shortest intermodal train I've ever seen. Then I realized I didn't have a scanner so I took a quick jaunt over to Radio Shack and got a small scanner. I punched in the frequencies I had and then drove down towards Granite Falls and Hanley Falls (southwest from Willmar). The TC&W line looked very weeded over and they weren't talking on the scanner at all so after eating lunch, I headed back towards Willmar. A little hint for anyone going out to Minnesota, when they say detour for a road closed for construction, they really mean it, I think I traveled through 3 counties each time I got detoured. I wish I had realized DM&E was as close as it was to where I was at, I would have headed down there. I didn't have a map, only my Garmin, which for some reason kept wanting me to turn down gravel roads. So I headed back to Willmar and all the nice engines were in the same spot as I left them in the morning. That didn't exactly bode well for some afternoon action. I headed east on the line and the only thing I ever picked up on my scanner was someone at Willmar Terminal calling it a day and coming back at 5:30AM. I did get shot of an old BN switcher in Litchfield. I turned around, went back to Willmar, nothing new in the yard so I called it a day. The moral of the story is that Monday's suck to railfan because all the other days I was out there it was almost non-stop, albeit late in the afternoon and early evening and at 3AM also.
