FL9

Last Friday after work my wife and I headed out for Sweetwater to see my father.  The light was perfect for a westbound on the UP Baird Sub, but the radio was quiet all the way past Weatherford.  When we approached the exit on I20 at the east end of the siding at Judd, I decided to take chance and see if anything was in evidence before heading on west.  This gamble paid off in that I could see an eastbound BNSF stack train in the siding pulled up to the east end about two hundred yards away.

The westbound signal was dark, but that did not mean much as it is approach lit these days with about a two minute warning as opposed to the 15 minutes you used to get.  I quickly put on the 100-400 Canon zoom as Judy got Molly our border lab out for a stretch, and when I looked back up the westbound signal was green now.  I barely had time to get into position on the south side before the UP 5077 and three other units came around the long S-curve, never slacking off the throttle.

He roared on by, and I could tell from the large number of UPS trailers and his speed this was probably the ZNSLC.  His rear end soon flashed by the BNSF train as the conductor gave his his roll by from the ground.

The westbound signal went from red to dark again, but the eastbound did not move. There was no word on the radio after the highball, so I figured another westbound must be close behind the “Z” train.  This proved to be true as after a few minutes the westbound signal lit up again.  I moved back to the north side of the tracks with the 24-105 zoom in place for this shot of another UP stack train rolling west in the “Z” train’s wake.

Now indeed it was the BNSF train’s turn, and he whistled off as the smoke rose over his three units when they started the train.  The plume had died down by the time he passed me at the crossing, still accelerating.

I did not count cars, but he was extremely long, and must have filled the 10,000-foot Judd siding nearly to capacity.  The show as over, so we packed up Molly and continued on uneventfully to Sweetwater. 

After the demise of their direct route northeast from Oklahoma City, OK to Parsons, KS, the Katy ran southeast on trackage rights over the Rock Island to McAlester for the Oklahoma City traffic to reach home rails.  For the years that this lasted, the normal power for the Katy train was a pair of F-units back to back.  December 2nd in 1977 was no exception as we watch Rock Island SW-1 #535 switch the Rock’s small yard in Shawnee, OK.  The eastbound Katy train led by the 78-C has just gotten orders at the yard office to proceed to Seminole and take the siding to meet a westbound Rock Island train.

Today the through route is still intact but not operated between Shawnee and McAlester.  The Arkansas & Oklahoma Railroad that operates here now would like to open it up again some day, but that is not yet in sight.

The location where this picture was taken in Dallas, TX is now behind the high fences of DART’s light rail maintenance facility, built on the site of the old AT&SF Dallas Yard.  There was no indication of that back on January 6th of 1991 when one could always find many locomotives laying over from the various intermodal and merchandise trains running north and south out of town.  This morning everything lined up like a good pool shot to capture two clean warbonnet B40-8W’s on different sets of power laid over at the Dallas engine terminal.

While many of these units still wear their warbonnet paint schemes today 15 years later,  they are as chipped and faded as the memories of Dallas Yard as it used to be.

On the morning of April 10th back in 1987, I left Springer, OK early in the morning to railfan the Katy north from Durant.  I arrived in Durant about sunrise, then checked with the always friendly operator and got a figure on when southbound freight #103 had left McAlester as that would be the only train for awhile.  I made my calculations and drove north to the small town of Caney about halfway between Caddo and Atoka.  At one time there was a depot and other small businesses near the tracks, but now only a few old buildings and houses remained in town at all, and it was deserted and quiet down by the tracks.  I set up just south of the Caney station sign, and before long I could hear the distinctive chord of a Leslie S5T.  The Durant operator had given me the power for the #103 as being three SD40-2’s, and what I was hearing confirmed that as the Katy’s SD40-2’s and GP39-2’s were delivered with this distinctive five chime.

The morning was still, and I could tell from the distant horn I was hearing him pass through Tushka about ten miles further north.  Soon I could hear the growing rumble of a fast train approaching, and SD40-2 #632’s headlight appeared around the curve about a mile away.  I snapped the picture just after he passed the station sign, the lower half of the units still partially obscured by early morning tree branch shadows.

His passage was swift, and indeed the Katy itself would not be around much longer.