FL9

Today I watched the sun set from my office window, knowing I would be dipping into the old slide boxes for tonight’s post. When I got home I put away my two new Atlas Ho scale red MKT GP40’s, which look great by the way. They sparked a memory back to the 1970’s when on the way back to Ardmore, OK from a visit to Bobbye Hall’s Hobby Shop, Earl Holloway and I encountered this southbound Katy intermodal train at Whitewright, TX on the way to their piggyback ramp in north Dallas. Today the old MKT line from Denison through Whitewright to Greenville and then to Dallas is operated by RailAmerica as the Texas & Northeastern and the Dallas, Garland & Northeastern short lines.

I drove home from work this afternoon thinking I would be choosing another photo from the past for today’s weblog, since at first I saw nothing at the west end of Centennial Yard. Then I spotted a headlight in one of the departure tracks. I got close enough that I could tell it was indeed a train that looked ready to depart, and from all the sharp right angles to the nose, the leader was an SD70Ace. I had been listening to just the Baird Sub road channel on the radio, so I dropped down to the yard channel, and was rewarded with the news that the MFWWC was granted permission to depart westward. The sun was barely above the treeline when I stopped at the old Bomber spur to catch the last rays of light when he passed by in a few minutes.

My 20D was at home, so I was resigned to use my backup camera, a Canon G6 point-and-shoot. It is a very versatile little camera none the less, and so when in automatic mode it showed a shutter speed of 1/250, I switched to shutter priority at 1/500, which yielded an adequate f 2.5 at ASA 400. The shadows were so long that mine was hidden in the bulky darkness of my Honda Pilot behind me. The crew was evidently in a good mood, as I got a few extra toots on the K5LLA horn as SD70Ace #8385 and three SD70M’s accelerated on past me.

The glint of the light in the going away shot looked good to me also, and the little G6 came through again.

By the time the last car passed me, the sun had completely vanished. These late in the day shots don’t appeal to everyone, so let me know what you think in the comment section below.

I continued operation clean up until noon on Sunday when John Briggs came by and we headed out for lunch and hopefully a few trains. Nothing was moving, so we ran by the service track at Centennial Yard on the way to eat. A GP38-2 still wearing lease colors but now patched as the UP 498 was sitting there and sparked a mystery, as I cannot find anything about it on the web tonight.

(Read on …)

I had promised myself that no matter what, I would stay at home this weekend and clean up my rat’s nest of an office/train room. The fact that I could barely navigate through the piles of stuff on the floor was almost outweighed by the clear blue skies of Saturday morning, which were offset by the high winds and extreme cold. I was a good boy and cleaned my room, and as it turned out, I was rewarded accordingly.

Last week Joshua Chlapek reported seeing an eastbound BNSF train on the UP Baird Sub that had an A-B-A lash up of SD45-2’s. I was envious as that was a consist I would have loved to photograph! I took my wife shopping late in the day, and brought my camera bag along at the last minute. I shot the BNSF 110 Job’s three GP50’s waiting on a passing stack train at the east end of Centennial Yard before moving on down to pick up interchange cars, and figured this would be my only shot of the day.

(Read on …)