FL9

On one of my first railfan trips out of Oklahoma to see the SP on November 11th in 1979, I came across this southbound freight in the hole at Groesbeck, TX with a crossing cut.  Even though it was a cloudy day, the power consisting of two SD40T-2’s with a GP35 in between was too nice to pass up.

The lead unit was assigned to the Cotton Belt, and I was especially happy to catch it as I had not seen to many of these yet at the time.  These units had the extra long noses to house early radio control gear.

The engineer’s pose is just as classic as the locomotive as he waits for several northbounds to arrive.

I managed to fill up an entire week with shots from last Sunday afternoon, but now we are about done.  Back at the diamonds now I visited with the other railfans as the sun dropped ever lower. Several movements passed by, one of which was a loaded grain train with one C44-9W and three SD70MAC’s in the transfer from the Fort Worth Sub to the Wichita Falls Sub southbound to North Yard.  A crewless loaded coal train bears witness on the left.

Amtrak 822 was due soon, so some of us moved onto the back porch of the depot to catch him northbound with the coal train in the foreground.

Next we were down to the last few minutes of full sun when four yard engines came north with a cut of cars to back through the transfer on the way to North Yard.

The final shot of the day came a few minutes later as a northbound on the UP Duncan Sub with an HLCX ex-SD45 6512 on the point passed through the last patch of direct sunlight.

Now we are at the end of the week on Friday.  I am leaving immediately after work today for Sweetwater to take care of my father for the weekend.  Since I’m limited to dialup out there, I have preloaded a few day’s worth of slides of the seemingly ever popular Southern Pacific, and I will see you live again sometime next week!

About the time I was finishing up with the meet at Avondale, railfans at Saginaw called me to say that two empty rock trains were heading north on the UP Duncan Sub.  I flipped over to that channel, and figured out from the track warrants that even though the first one was already past me on his way to Chico, I could intercept the second one at Newark north of Hicks.  When I arrived I set up with the water tower in the background for identification, and I only had a few minutes to wait for this shot.

I thought I was down low enough not to distort the train too much while still cropping out the advertising billboard overhead, but I did not quite succeed.  His whole train of empties was made up of rock hoppers with “CMO” reporting marks.

A little research revealed this stands for the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, which was a subsidiary of the Chicago & North Western Railway in the old days.  It is surprising how far back some of these ID’s can go.  With nothing else evident, I drove back to Saginaw and arrived just in time to see a UP mainfest train puling into the west pass at BNSF’s Saginaw Yard.  I hurried on down to the Industrial crossing north of the yard office for this picture of him passing the flour mill and the Saginaw city marker.

This had to be one of UP’s trackage rights trains over the BNSF from Kansas City to Fort Worth.  It turned out to have a very intriguing car in the consist in the form of this old ex-Delaware & Hudson hopper.

It’s new reporting marks of JOBX 4528 indicates it is now owned by railcar leasor Tealinc, Ltd.  With this now duly recorded on the compact flash card, I finally arrived at the Saginaw diamonds to visit with the gathered fans and capture a few last images for the day that I will share tomorrow.

As the BNSF 6087 disappeared around the curve at the end of yesterday’s post, I thought about going after the empty coal for its next meet a few miles on west at Herman.  One look at the clouds over the sun helped me to decide to stay put here at the big 180-degree curve and relax for a few minutes while waiting for the next two westbounds.  I caught up on a few railroad magazines until the BNSF 9795 West came into view with another empty coal train under cloudy skies.

This empty had another Grinstein green MAC on the rear also, but this time the DPU’s nose door was closed.

Now the sun made a brief visit as the BNSF 8038 West arrived on the scene runing solo with a bare table train.

Keeping up with the track warrants, his game plan was to stash his cars in the siding at Decatur, and then run back light to Alliance Yard.

As soon as the bare table move cleared Herman, the eastbound that had been patiently waiting there headed in my direction.  As he came around the big curve in the opposite direction, I could see the BNSF 4633 was leading an intermodal train towards Alliance Yard.

Done at the curve for now, I followed him back east towards his next meet at Avondale where he was to hold the main.  Several scenic locations were photographed on the way, but the full sun eluded me by moments each time.  The area around Avondale used to be open fields, but is now a sea of tract houses and slow streets that caused me to hold up at the west end of the siding.  Soon the BNSF 4025 West made his appearance leaving the siding on his way towards Wichita Falls.

So where did my Sunday afternoon travels take me next?  Tune in tomorrow to find out.