We left the house for Roseville just after 6:00 P.M on friday night, I had some idea that this would put me in the area around midnight and I wasn't far off. We showed up at Atlantic Street to meet with the gang at 12:19 P.M and I was in awe to see the line of clean UP passenger cars lined up behind the workers who were putting up tents and chairs for the ceremony the next morning.

I introduced myself to Ron and Alex introduced himself to me , telling me that the yard hostler that was supposed to pull the tarped unit out of the shops came on duty at 5:00 A.M, that he'd drag the unit over to our location and the unveiling was supposed to be at 7:30 sharp. We were hungry so we headed to In & Out, appeareantly the hangout for bored Roseville kids on Friday night.

When we got back to the parking lot on Atlantic, Drew had arrived with Scott and Ryan had made his way back down the street. It wasn't long before these guys made me feel like I was one of their group! We spent the night camped on atlantic street listening to tunes, laughing about random stuff and trying to decide on where they'd spot the Heritage unit ( Scott won ! )

05:00 A.M came alot sooner then I thought on the morning of the heritage unveiling. We decided that we'd head over to the opposing side of the yard where the unit was parked in the shops to see if we could get some tarped shots when they pulled it out. We all shared the same reaction when we turned the corner to find out that it was sitting in the shops minus a big blue tarp ! Drew slammed on the brakes and we jetted acrossed the street to make Drew, Scott and I the first three railfans in Roseville to see this unit without it's tarp followed up by Alex and Ryan who were making their way acrossed the yard.

We started firing off shots left and right of what we could see of this unit, the shop doors were closed and aside from the nose of the California Northern GP15-1 we couldn't get much.

They posed it for a couple photos infront of the shops and then brought it the rest of the way up the main to get it to where the passenger cars were parked, passing the old rotaries in the process

After a rather amazing Horn off with the E9, they spotted the unit right infront of the platform for employee viewing, we headed down the street for our ladders

The security was very strict ,as we were about to find out, about who got in to the not-so-unveiling ceremony. We all stood at the gate getting different shots of this unit. Thanks to Ron for the suggestion of bringing a ladder, it was a lifesaver ! We all tried getting different shot locations from the top of our ladders for a while until Alex walked by with an employee who had a ticket in, I seriously owe him big for this trip! My first thought once we got in was accomplishing a shot requested by Curt

One awesome thing was that they had all the banners there from previous unveilings

We tried to hang out around these units for pretty much all of the day until the end of the unveiling at one they even allowed us to tour the Passenger cars

As 1:00 P.M neared, the railfans started to leave the gates and the employees started to clear away from the ceremony. I tried a few different angles since nobody was really around and Drew, Alex and Scott headed to their hotel

We waited for a bit after visiting the model shop because they were getting permission to back the unit over the switches and into the shop tracks

We hit the hotel after watching it back in, I was ready for a good nights sleep ... didn't happen ;) We returned to the yard a bit after 4:30 A.M to see what we could find, we were going to wait around all day to see if we couldn't get the 1996 on it's maiden voyage. I took advantage of the early morning light to get some shop shots of the unit parked with the garage open this time.

One of the last shots I grabbed before heading to breakfast, the rotatires in Roseville

Overall , it was an AMAZING trip to say the least, I got to be a part of some fantastic stuff and I got to spend some time with some friends in the cab of my favorite locomotive (next to the tunnel motors that is ;-) ) Thanks for helping make this trip possible guys !