FL9

While I was doing my four years at the O.U. campus in Norman (I’m sure our resident Texas Aggie can make something out of that), the Santa Fe depot was the social spot in town for me in the mid-1970’s.  Amtrak had to rename train #15 and #16 to the “Lone Star” after Santa Fe would not let them use the “Texas Chief” name.  While the times changed slightly over the years, invariably #15 would come south in the morning and #16 would run north in the evening.

Sometimes the monotony of SDP40F’s was broken by a welcome surprise, such as on 4/9/77 when ATSF SD45 #5504 did the honors on the point since the original Amtrak unit had been damaged in a colllision with a car up north.

(Read on …)

Today the BNSF mainline south from Arkansas City, KS to Purcell, OK is a roller coaster in both directions, and it was no diferent back in the early 1980’s when it was the Oklahoma District of the Santa Fe’s Middle Division.  Westbound (compass south) trains got their first test after leaving the yard and crossing the Arkansas River when they tackled a 0.6% grade several miles up to the Oklahoma state border before dropping slightly downgrade towards Newkirk and Ponca City.  If they could make that first hill at a reasonable speed, the rest of the trip would be manageable.  Here we see that in practice as a southbound freight powered by two GP20’s, a GP38-2 and an F45 are about a mile north of the state line making 10 to 15 mph in Run 8 on August 17th, 1983.

The five miles of 1.0% grade westbound between Perry and Asp could be fun if you did not get a run at it, and the next big pull up the six miles of 0.7% grade starting at Seward south of Guthrie was on the aptly named “Waterloo Hill.”  Like Napoleon, more than one train met its Waterloo on this hill and had to be pulled or shoved to the crest a few miles north of Edmond.  On August 21st in 1984 we see the 325 train from Kansas City to Dallas powered by three rebuilt GP7’s and a GP38-2 halfway done with its battle to climb the grade.

Soon this train will have won today’s contest with Waterloo Hill, but there are still more to conquer on the way to “Big D.”

On a side note, after having emailed a copy Saturday’s photos of the “Warren R. Henry” to Patrick Henry Creative Promotions, yesterday I received a nice email in return from Greg Smith, the gentleman who was waving in the going-away shot.  The wonders of modern technology……

So 24 years into the past was not enough for you yesterday?  Well let’s use more of that technology and go back 34 years today to a family vacation in California when I was 17 years old.  We were escaping a Connecticut winter when I was granted some time trackside and caught this SP FP7A on the point of a westbound freight at Colton Tower about to leave for Los Angeles on February 22nd in 1972.

I still need to learn how to better use my scanner, as I have some darkening in the sky that I don’t see in the slide.  I could try to Photoshop it out, but I don’t have Leonard’s skills and it has been a long day.  Otherwise enjoy, as you surely won’t find this lashup again anywhere now.

The next day, February 23rd, found us eastbound across the desert with a stop at Mojave where I found a pair of SP SD45’s in near-perfect light.

The friendly crew climbed down to tell me they were waiting for the arrival of a northbound freight in order to shove it over Tehachapi Loop.    It was a whole different world railfanning back then with little of the tensions we face now.

Speaking of modern-day railfanning, the latest I have been told is the Star-Telegram article on BNSF’s Citizen’s for Rail Security program and railfans in general will run sometime this coming weekend.

I had a request this last weekend to hold off on the new stuff for awhile and dip into the slide boxes again.  I pulled this 24-year-old shot out on the first try and popped it into the scanner.  Back in 1982 I was living in Enid, Oklahoma and working for Motorola selling two-way radios.  Pratt, Kansas was not too far north up highway 281, and the old run-down Rock Island “Golden State Route” from Kansas City, KS to Tucumcari, NM had been purchased by the SSW (Cotton Belt) two years earlier.  SSW was now spending hundreds of millions to upgrade the line to 70 mph standards to connect with the SP at Tucumcari and complete a high-speed intermodal route between Kansas City and El Paso.

The little town of Cullison, KS is just west of Pratt, and it is there I caught this eastbound manifest freight on July 10th in 1982 powered by SP GP9E #3336 and three GP35’s.  The big power and fast trains had not arrived yet in force, so this slow freight did not have much to contend with in the way of opposing meets.  Check out the bright red nose and the full mars light package, something we sorely miss today.