Amtrak and BNSF Sunday, 2007
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Shakespeare often wrote about things going wrong, when the normal power structure was turned upside down. Most of his history plays, from Richard II through Henry IV, V and VI to Richard III deal with a civil war period in England known today as the Wars of the Roses. Even his flights of fancy often have a theme of the rightful order being disrupted. In the Tempest, Prospero has been usurped as by his brother, but all is made right in the end.
Im not the first person to notice this or observe that he started writing late in the reign of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen who would leave no heir. His concerns about what would happen who Good Queen Bess died came out in his many plays about disputed successions. Even after Elizabeth was dead and James VI of Scotland had become James I of England, plays such as Macbeth continued the theme of wars of succession after the rightful king is deposed.
Julius Caesar is not about Veni. Vidi. Vici or crossing the Rubicon. It is about the assassination of Caesar, who is not really a major character in the play, and the civil war that followed between the forces of Brutus and Marc Anthony. The theme continues in Anthony and Cleopatra, until at the end of that play, having first allied with Anthony to defeat Brutus, Octavius defeats him and becomes emperor as Augustus. Anthony always seemed too interested in skirt chasing to be a successful leader; perhaps his motto was Vidi. Vici. Veni. (Bet thats the first dirty Latin pun youve seen today!)
On 15 March 2007 Union Pacific should have taken the advice of Shakespeares Soothsayer in Julius Caesar
Sooth. Beware the ides of March.
(later)
Caesar. [To the Soothsayer.] The ides of March are come.
Sooth. Ay, Caesar; but not gone.
As it was most of the day passed normally in Sacramento, California. I had another dental appointment and got out of it just before the eastbound Zephyr was due to leave town. I considered trying to get to Johnston to shoot it coming off the American River bridge, but instead decided to shoot it at Haggin, where the ex-SP main passes over the ex-WP main and trains coming south on the former WP can turn east or west onto the SP. When I arrived a BNSF freight was waiting to follow the Zephyr to Elvas so it could continue south. #6 passed a couple minutes after I showed up.
This would be the last #6 to run on its regular route west of Roseville for some weeks until UP got the trestle rebuilt.
The BNSF train would normally have stayed on the Sacramento Sub (ex-WP) for the rest of its run to Stockton, but UP might have been doing trackwork. Note that the third unit is Norfolk Southern.
Mike Tisdale
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