FL9

I parked on the south side of the Trinity and walked into the park for the southbound BNSF freight coming away from a meet at Northside.  I could see another railfan in the distance closer to the bridge, but then my attention was captured by the first rarity in the audible form of a Nathan P5 horn.  The southbound materialized with the BSNF 1027 leading.

Other than some NS units, this is the first BNSF unit I have seen and heard in many years with a Nathan P5 horn which reminds me of the long vanished Rock Island.

The second rarity was the middle unit in the lashup, the Kansas City Southern of Mexico 3418.  Without a current KCS roster avaialble, I think is some variation of a GE C30, maybe one of those that was built in Mexico.

The other railfan turned out to be Cary Poole, and after spying a southbound FWWR passing through Tower 60 we quickly relocated to the North Main Street grade crossing.  The train was a Tolar Turn moving slowly over the site of a derailement that occured at the south leg of the Stockyards wye while I was in College Station.  The lead unit was GP50 2937 leased from NRE, and while this in itself was not a rarity, the nose-mounted grade crossing bell that was unique to the CNW certainly was as it mechanically clanged its way past our location.

It was obvious the sun was gone for the duration as the forecasted rain clouds thickened, so Cary and I went our separate ways towards home. 

On Friday the day after Thanksgiving I had some business at Hodge Yard, and afterwards I stopped off at Tower 60.  I barely had time to get out of the car before the BNSF 5525 North came by on Choctaw Main 1 in sunlight on its way to North Yard with automobile frames behind the trailing SD40-2.

A southbound at Northside was told by DS22 he would be waiting on a northbound train approaching Tower 55, but thirty minutes later as the sun vanished into the clouds a northbound empty UP coal train arrived first on Choctaw Main 1.

A few minutes later before the DPU on the empty coal passed my location the BNSF 7769 North rolled by in the foreground on the Fort Worth Sub.

While the northbound BNSF was still passing by I drove over the river to the park on the south side for the next train.

After lunch in College Station on Sunday the 18th, Judy and I drove north through Bryan on the way back to Highway 6.  On the old SP main south of Bush Junction in Bryan we came across the tail end of a northbound empty rock train, and after passing a long string of Georgetown cars we found the UP 7576 alone on the point.

Neither the signals or the radio indicated a southbound train anywhere close, so we drove on towards Hearne where we made our next and last viable catch for the day.  We arrived at the diamond at the north end of Hearne just as the UP 5167 South on the ex-SP Ennis Sub was getting permission to pass the red signal at CP HL120 and pass over the ex-MP to Palestine, now the UP’s Hearne Sub.

As the train headed on down towards the yard office we got back on Highway 6 where we soon lost the sun behind a heavy cloud bank.  I stopped for a loaded coal train just south of Riesel, but the light was long gone and I did not get any usable results.  From there we drove on home with no more stops and got ready to go back to work on Monday.

The third and final layout I was able to visit on Sunday the 18th was Chuck and Laurie Lind’s On3-Scale Tall Pine Lumber Company Railroad, also in College Station.  Located on the second story of a separate building behind the Lind’s home, this narrow guage railroad modeled to depict 1930’s California logging takes marvelous advantage of the amount of minute detail you can include in an O-Guage scene.  Just look for yourself below!

(Read on …)