Ken Fitzgerald’s railroad photography, railroad radio frequencies and locomotive horns.

The title of today’s blog has a double meaning as my last photos for 2011 were taken on the UP’s Baird Sub near my home. December 31st started out with a set of photos on the FWWR after I got a call from friend and fellow railfan Harald Koch who also happens to be the the Senior Manager of Operations and Planning for the FWWR. A unit frac sand train from Minnesota was being picked up by an FWWR crew at BNSF Saginaw Yard, so Harald and I agreed to meet on top of the Lancaster Street overpass just south of 7th Street. We were joined there by J.R. Leal, and after a brief conversation we were occupied with photographing the train’s passage below us. The BNSF 4337 and 748 were up front with over 100 cars of unprocessed frac sand bound for the MAALT transload in Cleburne between them and the BNSF 4918 running in DPU mode.

None of us opted to chase the train, and after visiting a bit more we decided to drive up to Hodge yard to photograph the two ex-DT&I, ex-GT GP40’s that have been purchased by the FWWR. These two units will become the FWWR 2021 and 2022 when they are painted next spring after the weather warms up. We found them switching the west end of the yard coupled up to the FWWR 2014.

The FWWR 2013 was parked down by the new fuel spot.

After taking Judy to lunch, on the way home we shot the UP 8093 parked at the west end of Davidson Yard.

Further west towards Iona on the UP Baird Sub we caught this eastbound manifest train with all CSX power up front.

When we got home I worked the rest of the afternoon on cleaning out the garage, and I had made good progress by the time the sun was low in the southwestern sky. Not knowing if anything was close on the Baird Sub I decided to go for a “Hail Mary” train photo with the sunset, so Judy and I piled into the Explorer and parked on the cut above the west end of Iona siding. The sun sank lower and lower, and still the radio was silent. I was starting to work out a “sun setting over the empty rails” shot when at the last possible moment the radio came to life with an eastbound train passing the detector at Aledo three miles to the west. I quickly adjusted the camera settings and when the train roared upgrade through the “S” curve I was ready.

In the few seconds between the previous shot and this one I opened up the exposure another f-stop and made note the lead unit was the FXE 4008, a new SD70ACe followed by a second FXE SD70ACe and a BNSF C44-9 still in warbonnet. That lashup told me this manifest train was a BNSF trackage rights train out of Sweetwater heading for Alliance Yard.

With these two good New Year’s Eve sunset shots in the bag, Judy and I drove to the grocery store in Willow Park for a few items. On the way back home as we approached the main grade crossing in Aledo the eastbound signal lit up witha flashing yellow as I was looking at it. This meant an eastbound train was less than two miles away, and I pulled over to in front of the small row of shops facing the tracks to get my camera out one more time this year. I tried to compose a scene with what I had to work with, but there was no time to get a flash unit out and the tracks themselves are not well lit through Aledo. I could hear the tell tale exhaust of GE units coming upgrade, so I planted my back against the doorway of a shop that is directly in line with the grade crossing and braced my arms and the camera against my body for an aperature priority shot with the camera set to f/22 at ISO 400. I took a deep breath and held it just before pressing the shutter as the crossing protection started and the gates came down.

What turned out to be a ten second exposure seemed like an eternity, and I was surprised at how much the resulting picture was in focus for such a long exposure without the stability of a tripod. The advances over the past few years in image stabilization and digital cameras have made many photographic compositions more readily achievable than before. In retrospect experimenting with other settings may have resulted in a better photo, but I was out of time and ideas for what turned out to be my last physical photo taken in 2011. I am still pretty happy with the results considering the curcumstances. A westbound train was coming into Iona to meet this eastbound UP train, but we had frozen foods in the car so we drove on to the safety of home for the rest of New Year’s Eve. My thoughts were on what was in store for 2012?