FL9

It seems like a good time for a few more chapters of our trip to Wheeling, WV this past August.  We left off with Judy and Molly our yellow lab standing on the banks of the Ohio River in Wheeling on the evening of August 13th.  The next day we left Molly with my first wife’s family and picked my son Lukas before heading towards the Oglebay Zoo.  Along the way we stopped briefly at Benwood Junction, a busy location in steam days just south of Wheeling.  Today this spot is the northern end of a CSX branch line that serves industries south of here along the Ohio and an interchange for coal trains with the Wheeling & Lake Erie.  Today all that was evident were a few freight cars and a pair of big GE’s shut down and silently waiting for their next assignment.

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Last Saturday afternoon after catching the FWWR pipe train at Eighth Avenue I picked up friend Danny Sisson to railfan for thirty minutes or so before I needed to stop by the office.  We drove over to Broadway Street to see what might be waiting nearby to cross Tower 55, and ran into UP signal foreman Jim DeNike for the first time since the UP 844 chase a week earlier.  Jim had his PPE on and was in the company truck, and we visited for a few minutes as a set of power from a rock train turned at the tower and an eastbound mainfest pounded over the diamonds.  Next up a short BNSF grain train led by a NS GE and an Oakway EMD combo accelerated past us on its way towards Temple.

A few minutes later just as I was needing to leave to drop Danny off and head for the office a northbound UP empty coal train left the Ney bypass heading for the Choctaw Sub.

That wrapped up the weekend before a short work week followed by a trip to Sweetwater to visit my father from Thursday the 27th through Sunday the 30th.

After a gap of more than a year, a unit pipe train bound for the Dublin Sub was delivered by the UP to the FWWR to be unloaded at the pipe yard halfway up the grade between Granbury and Tolar.  The FWWR switched the train at Hodge Yard and added idler cars to the front and rear of the 47 loads of pipe.  I chose to photograph the occasion at Eighth Avenue where I could get open shots of as much of the train at one time as possible from ground level.  At 2:38pm  FWWR SD40’s #2015 and #2016 and UP SD70M #4931 crested the grade up from the Trinity River and approached my location.

The units had idled down by the time they passed me before entering the first sharp curve at the west end of Eighth Avenue Yard.

This appears to be smaller diameter pipe compared to the loads delivered last year.

Due to the overcast and high weeds futher west, I let the train go at this point and headed on to deliver a few items to friend Danny Sisson. 

Last Sunday morning I got word the FWWR had received a 47-car unit pipe train from the UP overnight to take to Tolar so the cars could then be sent to the pipe yard halfway between there and Granbury a few at a time for unloading.  While the train was being switched at Hodge Yard, Judy and I stopped by the engine terminal at UP’s Davidson Yard and met John Briggs to see what might be of interest.  I had to quickly prepare for this shot as a BNSF interchange job powered by a GP38-2, an SD45-2 and a Genset pulled in on the new bypass #2.

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