Wednesday Feb 22 2006
Cabin Fever on February 20th
I learned to drive in Connecticut with its snowy and icy winters, so I’m not too worried when the weather gets bad; but I do worry about the crazy drivers here that still drive 70 mph and then don’t understand why they could not stop before they crashed into you. So I waited until the temperatures got above freezing on Monday before succumbing to my cabin fever and getting out for a few trains.
I personally like to get out and photograph in any kind of weather, and try to compose shots that can’t be done on sunny days, which Monday definitely was not. This may be a good thing, as the subject for this year’s Trains Magazine/Canon Photo Contest is “The Elements.” Today though I pretty much stuck to the conventional angles, but I’m not afraid to show the overcast results here. Check tomorrow’s web log for better examples of how to use low light to your advantage.
I left the house a little after 2:00pm with the intention of meeting up with Troy Minnick around Saginaw. The radio indicated there was a southbound UP waiting on two northbound BNSF’s at Saginaw, but I knew I probably could not get there in time for that, so I decided to cruise Centennial Yard on the way up. A UP signal crew had the mainline red flagged at the west end, and they were programming the CTC signals for the new bypass tracks as the heads were now turned into working position and lit up.
The MFWOD train was made up and sitting at the west end in the yard. He had a NS GE on the point, but his third unit caught my attention as it was a new NS SD70M-2, my first in that paint scheme. I parked and walked across Vickery Boulevard for this broadside shot.
Just as I finished I looked east and saw a westbound UP intermodal coming down the original Santa Fe bypass, so I quickly repositioned for that shot with the MFWOD in the background.
Nothing interesting was at the ready tracks, so I headed towards Saginaw, noting there were two northbound BNSF empty coal trains waiting at Tower 55. Arriving at Saginaw I just missed a BNSF loaded coal train pulling into North Yard and since nothing else was close, I called Troy and we agreed to meet at Tower 60 instead. I quickly stopped at the Saginaw Yard Office to record this scene of two consecutively numbered GP38’s working together.
We both arrived at Tower 60 just in time to set up for the first empty coal, which had a random mix of cars and no DPU.
The second empty coal was right behind him, and in hindsight we should have moved to the other side between the Fort Worth and the Wichita Falls Subs for this shot.
Before he arrived we could hear a K5HL horn in the distance coming down from North Yard, and deduced that must be the loaded coal train I had missed, and that he had a new GE on then point. We figured we would have plenty of time to shoot the empty north bound on the Fort Worth Sub, and then step across to shoot the load south bound on the Wichita Falls Sub. Wrong! There he went by on the other side as the empty was only halfway gone.
We jumped in our cars thinking he would stop at the switch at Rio to head onto the Racetrack and on down to the TRE to run across towards Dallas. Wrong again! He charged right up the hill on the old FW&D towards Tower 55. We missed him by seconds at the last crossing, and so I started listening to the UP Terminal Dispatcher to see if he was going towards Temple on the BNSF, or down the UP’s Midlothian Sub to Waxahachie. We weren’t going to give up this easily!
I immediately heard he was bound for the Midlothian Sub and that he already had his track warrant. Troy and I drove on down the south end of Ney Yard, which turned out to finally be the right place at the right time for this train. As he stopped in front of us, the dispatcher asked for his warrant back, as the train ahead of him was having trouble with an oversized load. He was told he would be there for several hours, so we leisurely got our shots and headed back north to Saginaw.
We arrived back at the city parking lot just before 5:00pm to see the BNSF 107 job out of North Yard pulling through the transfer track to the Fort Worth Sub with the massive elevators in the background. The sun almost came out for this shot.
He radioed DS22 and asked for permission to come out onto the Fort Worth Sub and back his train down into Saginaw Yard. Once he had promised he could do this in fifteen minutes, DS22 let him out ahead of Amtrak 822’s imminent departure from downtown, so we knew nothing else was close.
Troy and I parted company, and cloudy or not, I could not complain for only being out for a little over three hours. Back to work tomorrow!
