FL9

Today thanks to calls from Danny Sisson I was able to schedule lunch around a westbound UP intermodal powered by both Olympic SD70M’s and an SD70ACe.  Being the high sun time of day, I decided on the Benbrook house track once again as the best location.  After lunch, Doug Donk and I headed there when John Briggs called to say the train was coming down the hill to Davidson Yard.  The Baird Sub dispatcher decided to bring an eastbound in from Earls while the Olympic powered train changed crews.

Shortly after the eastbound cleared up in new bypass #2, our train came out of new bypass #3 and was sailing past our location a few minutes later.

The 2002 still looks pretty good after five or so years.

And the 2001 is holding its own too.

Mission accomplished, but now it was time to go back to work.

On Saturday afternoon visiting fireman (albeit retired) Roddy Wilder of Georgetown and I headed out for a few hours to see what we could find.  I was on call for work, but fortunately was able to take care of everything by phone and did not have to go in.  The first thing we heard on the radio was the UP ZNSLC ready to leave the west end of Davidson Yard.  The Spring dispatch center gave him the bad news that their computers had crashed earlier, and they could not run any trains in the Fort Worth area for the time being.  Roddy and I set up at the Benbrook house track and waited about half an hour before the dispatcher was able to line the hot westbound out of town and past our cameras.

We next drove towards Tower 60, and along the way we heard the Grapevine passenger train had been delayed almost an hour at FWWR Junction as the UP Terminal Dispatcher had also been put out of business by the computer outage.  Nothing else was happening at Tower 60, so we set up to capture GP7 #2199 coming through the park on final approach to the Stockyards after crossing Marine Creek.

Everyone looked like they were wrung out as the un-airconditioned cars rolled by us.  One of the train robbers on horseback was bringing up the rear behind observation car #207 on this hot and muggy afternoon.

Back on the road, we headed up to Saginaw.

Back on November 27th in 1977 we see the Frisco’s Lawton Local leaving the Oklahoma City yard behind as it crosses the North Canadian River bridge.

This train starting out over the Chickasha Subdivision is powered by three GP38’s in the mandarin orange and white paint scheme.  Today this line is operated by the Stillwater Central short line.

After 3:00pm last Sunday afternoon I got back out and picked up friends Danny Sisson and Allie Gorman to take them to dinner.  On the way to eat on the southwest side of Fort Worth, we managed to arrive at the Magnolia Street crossing a few seconds before Amtrak 21 on its way out of Fort Worth towards San Antonio.

(Read on …)