On Saturday, July 17, Amtrak’s latest new piece of motive power was added to the eastbound California Zephyr leaving Emeryville – Amtrak ALC-42 #301. 301 is the second of 75 new Siemens Charger locomotives purchased to replace the aging P42DCs on the long distance trains. It also wears a scheme commemorating the very first Amtrak painted locomotive – #4316 – from back when Amtrak was founded in 1971.

With the train running late and having nothing else that I really absolutely had to do on Sunday, I decided to go chase it and see this new engine while it was still pristine. I caught up with it at Glenwood, when it was about 3h30 behind schedule, and wound up chasing it all the way to the Moffat Tunnel. The results can be found in a new trip report – Amtrak 301 Across Colorado.

When I cleaned out my garage in January, I found a box of stuff that probably hadn’t been touched since my ex and I bought this place 15 years ago. At the bottom was a small Ziploc bag with eight rolls of color print film in it, shot but never developed. Now given that I stopped shooting film in early 2001, that gives you a minimum possible age for this stuff. Could there be any hope for this stuff? Back when I still shot film, heat was pretty much enemy #1 and I was extremely careful about keeping film cold if it wasn’t in the camera. This stuff, on the other hand, had been in a box in a hot garage for nearly two decades.