FL9

After Dan and Ralph from the Star-Telegram left us on Saturday afternoon, John and David and I were next graced with a visit from a loaded UP coal train off of the Wichita Falls Sub.

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When I learned the BNSF website was up to accept applications for the new “Citizens for Rail Security” program, I signed up and obtained my card with the number 054.  The website has been busy as I understand the numbers are now over 3000.  Whether you sign up or not is fine by me, but personally I think it is a positive step for BNSF to officially recognize the fact that railfans do exist.  I would like to see the program succeed and grow from this point.

I received a call from BNSF this week asking if I would help the program by allowing a reporter from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to tag along on a railfan outing so he could write a story on our activities and the new initiative by BNSF.  I agreed, and picked up Dan Piller from the Star-Telegram along with John Briggs and David Hawkins on Saturday morning.  We headed towards Saginaw after hearing two northbounds on the BNSF, one with a KCS and the other with a new SD70ACe on the point.  We caught the KCS 4616 north first at the north end of Saginaw Yard.

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One might assume from the title that I’m referring to the old Southern Railway, but I’m actually talking about the current operator of another defunct “Southern,” the Abilene & Southern around Abilene, Texas.  The remaining ex-FW&D trackage north and ex-A&S trackage south from the UP interchange is operated by the Southern Switching Company using a pair of ex-military EMC NW2’s, their 12-cylinder, 1000-horsepower 567’s a welcome sound compared to today’s silenced exhausts.

Here we see the two-man crew switching around Abilene with #1865 on a cool April morning in the year 2000.  These shots were scanned from slides using my older Epson flatbed scanner, and I will redo them with the new Nikon slide scanner when there is time.

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Yesterday afternoon on the way home I found an intermodal train cooling its heels with a red board at the west end of UP’s Centennial Yard, and while I could hear some switching moves on the Baird Sub channel, I could not see anything moving.  Thinking there might be some activity at either the Bomber or Benbrook spur tracks, I headed on west myself.

The surprise came next in that two CP Rail SD40-2’s in work train service were putting some loaded ballast cars away in the Benbrook spur, and then getting in the clear themselves on the west end.  Unfortunately the sun at this time of year was already on the north side of mainline where there was no legal access to safely stand, so I had to settle for the backlighting on the street side.  The Benbrook spur is now overgrown with sunflowers,  so today I tried to work them into the picture.

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