FL9

After steam-cleaning some of our carpets this morning, I was ready for some railroad action in the afternoon.  The light was good and according to the radio several westbounds were in the picture for the Baird Sub.  John Briggs came over at 3:00pm, and we headed west on I20 right behind the UP 4415.  He met eastbounds at Iona, Earls and Weatherford, but we let all those go in favor of the good light on the nose of the westbounds.  The 4415 was moving at a good clip on the refurbished track, so we bet on the idea we could beat him to North Lambert Road on the west side of Weatherford.  Most of the driving yuppies that have adopted Weatherford as their new home decided to get in our way, but we still made it with about three minutes to spare before this shot.

There is a perfect sag here to emphasize with a telephoto, but notice the zebra stripes on the nose? They are the shadows cast by the UP communications tower next to the track on the right.  Do I anticipate this and take my shot two seconds earlier?  Well of course not.  Do I recover with the second shot taken a few seconds later after he passes the tower?  Well of course not, now I have even more glare on the conductor’s windshield that I don’t want to take the time tonight to correct in Photoshop.  So you will have to settle for this one.

He met yet another eastbound at Preble, so we passed on this back-lit train and let him run interference for us as we moved towards town and the Garner Road crossing and he moved up to the Weatherford siding.  We heard the crew banter as the next westbound met eastbounds at Earls and Weatherford, and all too quickly the ZNSLC with NS 9112 on the point blew past with a number of UPS trailers in tow.

We rolled the dice and decided to head back into downtown for the MFWOD, who was somewhere between Iona and Earls.  We made it to the east end of the Weatherford siding just in time for him to speed by on the way to Odessa with a clean UP flag unit #5088.

Now things started to get interesting, as the KCXCI train with CSX 7857 leading had left Fort Worth with engine trouble, and was going to get the UP SD40-2 #3505 from an eastbound at Iona.  There was already an eastbound with CSX power in the hole at Earls ahead of us, so we were surprised when the UP 4625 east took off from the Weatherford siding behind us as we were going over the Highway 80 overpass.  Hey, we can take the back roads to Iona and beat him there, maybe even get a picture along the way.  Wrong!  Once again improved track let him shoot past us like we were on foot.  If not for the engine hand-off going on at Iona, we would never have seen him again.

He was pulling part-way into the siding at Iona behind the first eastbound when John and I caught up, so we headed on down to the east end.  The engine pick-up was done and the CSX 7857 was ready to head west, but now the siding switch would not lock up for the main, so the conductor was given permission to walk up and put it in hand-throw.  The wind was gusting at what seemed like 50 mph, and this is where Image Stabilization paid off as I did not have time to get out the tripod for this telephoto shot of the conductor headed our way.

He threw the switch and got it to lock up so they could get the signal, and we were treated to the sound symphony of the KCXCI starting his train on the hill with a mix of GE and EMD prime movers as he met the first eastbound.

We moved down to where we could photograph the westbound’s head end passing the rear end of the first eastbound with the head end of the second train in the foreground to illustrate the triple meet.

The 7857 slowed and stopped between the switches, so we followed the two eastbounds on down into Fort Worth and called it a day with four well-lit westbounds in the bag.