FL9

For today’s not-so-oldies, first up we see three big GE’s lugging a southbound grain train from Enid, OK to Houston, TX up the grade from the Red River bridge to Gainesville in 1989.  The middle unit is a C30-7, but the lead and trailing units started life as U36-C’s and were subsequently rebuilt by the Santa Fe Cleburne Shops in to SF30-C’s.  There was no missing that bright aborted SP merger paint either.

An early morning call from a friend in July of 1992 sent me scrambling for the car keys when the word came through about a northbound Santa Fe inspection train leaving Fort Worth.  I was able to get ahead of him when he stopped in Gainesville to change crews, and I set up at the FM 1202 crossing north of town at the crest of the grade down to the river.  In a few minutes he came flying by, his spotlessly clean train powered by an equally clean B40-8W.

I had to wait five years to get another clean B40-8W on a passenger train, namely the Super Bowl Special headed south on January 27th in 1997.  He was not due into Fort Worth until after dark, so I got off from work early and drove north until I heard him on the radio leaving Marietta, OK.  I pulled over and set up on the west side of the tracks in the middle of the siding at Thackerville as the last rays of the direct sunlight were about to fade.  He came through a few minutes later just in the nick of time, powered by BNSF B40-8W #560 leading the now ex-BN Executive F-units.

We’ll see where the roulette wheel of old slides takes us tomorrow.