FL9

Black Friday seems like an incompatible nickname for a day that started out perfectly clear.  My wife had to go to work and my visiting younger stepson Doug needed to work on a college paper, so I grabbed up the camera bag and headed out the door.  I heard the BNSF Wichita Falls Sub dispatcher talking to the 6100 East around Decatur, so I headed in that direction.  As I came around Loop 820 I encountered heavy fog around White Settlement, but it had cleared off again by the time I reached Saginaw.  Nothing was happening at the diamonds, so I drove on up to Hicks and set up beside the long straight stretch next to the airfield.  

Two westbounds were meeting the eastbound GEVO-powered coal train at Avondale, but I decided to stay here and let him come to me.  However my first shot of the day turned out not to be of the 6100, as a northbound UP freight on the Duncan Sub motored by on the way to Wichita.  As he was coming out of the southern winter sun, I framed him as a broadside across the field as he passed my location, complete with an SP trailing unit.

Low clouds started to blow rapidly through the area from the south, and I was afraid they would obscure the sun too soon as I could now hear the GEVO’s K5HL horn in the distance.  I got lucky though as they instead provided a dark background as he swept past the Hicks Airfield.

I beat the loaded coal back to Saginaw, and just missed a southbound vehicle train led by an ES44DC.  The southbound UP transfer job right behind him that I did catch had the better lead unit in the form of a rare GP40X.

Close by on his heels was the loaded coal train coming in for a crew change at the west end.

I had around an hour left before I needed to be home to pick up Doug and then take Judy to lunch, so I started to head south.  At the north end of North Yard I spied a parked empty coal train led by a SD70ACe.  Undaunted by the fact he was back lit, I used the long telephoto to reach out onto BNSF property as a yard job peeked around the corner.

Now the radio informed me of a train that would have good light as the BNSF 4032 called the TRE dispatcher about heading east to Dallas on the commuter line.  I headed down that way and saw him just crossing the Trinity River as the TRE dispatcher told him to hold up on the main short of the Beach Street crossing to meet a westbound at Sylvania.  I set up on the east side of the crossing, and took this shot of the BNSF intermodal parked in the shadow of the grain elevator with Fort Worth in the background.

Soon the TRE dispatcher asked the 4032 to pull on up to the signal, and I moved down closer to the east end of Sylvania for this shot of a westbound TRE taking the siding.

TRE 566 took its train on down to the west end, and had to wait for the rear end of the now rapidly accelerating intermodal to pass by before getting a signal out of the siding to continue on to Fort Worth.

I drove on home now to pick up Doug and take Judy to lunch.  Even though it was sunny and 70 degrees, the countdown to Christmas was made real by seeing Santa Claus driving along beside me on I35 in a white Ford Explorer.  After lunch Doug and I headed out to run some errands, and we happened to catch this westbound auto rack on the UP Baird Sub with two CSX units as he passed through Boaz Park.

Later on when we finished our chores, the radio indicated some activity on the Wichita Falls Sub as two westbounds were going to meet an eastbound intermodal at Avondale.  We got there to find the eastbound intermodal already in the siding, and the first westbound was an empty UP coal train.

The empty coal was moving at 65 mph, and soon the signal at the east end of Avondale was green again for the second westbound.

A glint of sun started to break through the clouds as the second westbound came by at speed, this time a BNSF intermodal.

As soon as the second westbound was gone, the eastbound intermodal in the siding came alive and headed into the last rays of the setting sun.

Following it down towards CP 11, We stopped on the Business 287 overpass over the UP for a moment to capture this last view of the sun for Black Friday.

After watching the intermodal pass us by at Hicks, we drove east over to the Fort Worth Sub and waited a few minutes for him to run on down to Saginaw and circle back up to us for this view at the north end of Lake Wanda.

As it rolled the last few miles to Alliance Yard, Doug and I called it quits and drove our last few miles back to Benbrook.