It had been a few days since the E&LS came to Green Bay and recent activity suggested that Sunday's were a good possibility. So, on the pretext that I was going out to get my wife a soda (be back in 45 minutes!) I headed toward Stiles Junction. The fact that they had not operated south for a few days helped. As long as the tracks were snow covered I would not miss any movement. When I was about 4 miles from the Jct. I heard talk on the scanner. What luck. The 1338 and 402 had just set out a CN hi-cube that must be headed for Oconto Falls. Odd thing was that this car clearly came from a block of box cars picked up at LP in Sagola:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frvr11/8505515294/in/photostream

So, when I arrived they had just started shoving back to the rest of their train at Olson Rd. After a quick brake test they headed south. By my count they had about 90 cars, maybe 45 Badger Mining 34 foot sand cars coming out of storage, 2 other covered hoppers that looked like "out of storage" cars. The loads were the remaining 13 box car loads from LP and 30 pulpwood loads. Last time I caught these guys they had 5 BCOL cars in the LP block and today they had 5 or 6 DWC/CN hi-cubes. Someone apparently wants cars of a higher capacity for the OSB traffic. Anyway, after departing the Jct. I caught them pulling hard and plowing snow uphill near Timberline Rd.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frvr11/8505515294/in/photostream

A couple miles farther south they blew through snow plow leavings in Abrams.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frvr11/8504096047/in/photostream

By now I had exhausted my time and headed home. The CN generally does not let the E&LS into their GB yard with more than 75 cars. Since they had around 90 and it took the crew quite a while to call for an Authority onto the CN, I'm guessing they reduced their train to 75 cars at Lineville Rd. by setting out 15 at Cormier Siding which is about a mile south of Lineville. After that, they had to wait about another hour at Lineville for CN's L550 from Gladstone to get into town.

Hopefully I didn't put anyone to sleep.