FL9

Today’s post will begin the official Montana trip coverage, but I promise the chronological entries will be broken up by days featuring some of the favored older slides too.  After a weekend of packing, my older stepson dropped Judy and I off at the Fort Worth ITC on the afternoon of Monday October 9th to catch Amtrak train 22 bound for Chicago.  We checked some of our bags, and made a fort with the rest on the platform near the display trolley car.

The area was alive with activity as Train 21 was already in the station, Train 821 was arriving from Oklahoma,  and the TRE along with city busses were trading a multitude of passengers.  Here we see TRE Train 2923 with an F59PHI stopped in the ITC before moving on to the end of the line at the T&P building.

Train 21 soon left on its way south, and on the radio we could hear it meeting Train 22 at Birds.  I left Judy with the bags and walked down to the south end of the platform for this shot of 22 arriving a few minutes later with P42DC 31 in charge, and three private cars on the rear of the normal consist.

I strolled back to where Judy was waiting, and we gathered up our luggage and started on our way down to our assigned sleeper.  We checked in with our attendant Phyllis, who invited us to board her “Happy Car,” and she certainly meant it as we were to find out over the next 24 hours.  Some of the luggage was stashed in the rack, and we made our way up the winding stairs with the rest to our roomette.  We had one with a bathroom, and were very pleased with the amount of space available.

With time to kill, I made my way back down to the platform for a better picture of the private cars, but unfortunately could not get any closer than this angle.  I could make out that the closest car was the Eagle View 621 and that the next car was ex-New York Central, but the two-tone green observation car was a mystery at this distance.  I subsequently learned the cars were on a private charter, and belong to the Trans-Texas Rail Shop in San Antonio.

I went back upstairs and settled in to begin our journey.  Soon we backed out of the station and on south of Tower 55 before pulling north and then east around the southeast corner of the interlocking.  As we turned towards Dallas, it was evident a second P42DC had been added to the point of our train to help with the three extra cars.  You will see many through-the-window shots like this one in the days to come, and almost all will contain minor imperfections due to the condition of the glass and the angle of the camera and lighting.  Regardless, the story of the trip would not be complete without them.

We ran over the UP to Dallas without incident, and soon after leaving Mesquite the sun began to set behind us.  However as the light faded my picture taking did not stop as you will see tomorrow.