FL9

Too many times I choose a slide that shows a train coming towards me.  Today I used the same box I drew from yesterday, except looking for a caboose shot.  The Oklahoma City skyline is growing larger on the horizon as a westbound Rock Island freight train out of Shawnee slowly traverses worn-out rails approaching its next stop at Harter Yard.

This is Subdivision 33 of Rock Island’s Southern Division, part of what was more well known as the “Choctaw Route” between Memphis, Tennessee and Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Not long after this photo was taken, the Santa Fe looked into buying this line and rebuilding it as a new transcon route, but eventually decided the cost would be too great due to its run-down condition. 

Today’s spin of the wheel brings us a slide from March 21st in 1976 as we see a northbound Rock Island freight train passing through Kingfisher, Oklahoma.  The power is a diverse mix of two SD40-2’s, a U28B and a GP7.

After the breakup of the Rock Island in the early 1980’s, all ten SD40-2’s went to the Illinois Central Gulf.  What was the Rock’s Southern Region Subdivision 25 between Caldwell, Kansas and El Reno, Oklahoma is today part of the Union Pacific’s Enid Subdivision.

When I grabbed a random box of slides last night and sorted through several mediocre shots from July of 1997 I stopped when I came across this one of a northbound rock train passing the depot in Davis, Oklahoma with a GP30 leading.  It appears to be a classic Santa Fe photo until you look more closely.

The merger of the AT&SF into the BNSF is seven months old at this point, and the Davis depot was converted into the Arbuckle Historical Museum after being refurbished in 1992 and separated from the tracks by an iron fence.  The first two units of the rock train power are unpatched Santa Fe, but the third unit wears a BN number and green paint.  Lead unit 2773 was delivered to the Santa Fe in 1963 as the 1373, and several months after this picture was taken all the ex-ATSF GP30’s were moved to the 2400 class.  As far as I know the 2773 is still out there somewhere today as the BNSF 2471. 

Sunday afternoon before Judy and I left Sweetwater to head back home, we stopped off at the UP when the ever faithful radio let us know about two westbounds coming into town on the Baird Sub.  We caught the first one a hundred yards or so east of the depot as it slowed for a crew change.  An SD70Ace and two more units led a string of well cars past the large open space that used to be the Sweetwater Yard in Texas & Pacific days.  The concrete supports in the foreground on the right used to hold a large metal tank that supplied fuel for the local diesel switcher, usually a Jenks blue GP7 or a GP18 in my childhood.

(Read on …)