My wife and I spent the weekend in Red Wing, MN; a scenic town along the Mississippi with terrific Fall color but also a great place for train watching as several freights and the Empire Builder run through daily. There are grain mills along the river walk and we watched as crews were moving covered hoppers around. We noticed that a number of them had clumps of dried out bushes like tumbleweeds placed in the platforms at one or both ends (?) This seemed to be intentional as the locomotive setting them out had a pile of brush at the back end as well, contained by the safety railings. I saw one crew member pull some from the loco and throw a bush onto the end of a covered hopper. He was pretty busy and a bit too far into the elevator property for me to go up and ask...any one have any ideas what that was about?
Ralph
Ralph