FL9

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.

We drove back east to the west switch at Sweetwater siding where the end of the intermodal train was sitting.  A pair of old T&P ABS signals and a hand-throw switch that had occupied this spot for nearly half a century have been replaced by modern gear as CTC marched west last year.  I wanted a picture of a westbound passing the new “West Sweetwater” sign, and a few minutes after the first stack train left town I got my wish and sun too as the UP 5293 West pulled by leading an old SD60M and what turned out to be an endless string of containers.

The previous train had three units, and his rear end had been stopped between the signals indicating his length to be right around 5,000 feet.  The 5293 West pulled on down to the crew change point and the rear end still was not visible around the curve to the east.  We decided to drive down to the depot and watch this one leave town since as far as we could tell it only had two units.  The inbound crew was just getting off as we parked and I shot from the grade crossing as I liked the American flag straight out in the breeze.

A closer view showed the train stretching back out of sight around the curve over a mile away.

This is when it dawned on me since the lead unit was a GEVO there might be a DPU back there, but the answer was not quick in coming as the outbound crew did not start pulling on the train until 40 more minutes had passed.  I like the old tin and wood building on the north side of the track here and worked it into the shot as the units were quickly advanced to Run 8.

Sure enough after what I roughly figured to be 10,000 feet of train passed by, the rear end arrived with a GEVO shoving hard as it passed the signal just west of the depot.

This was my first UP train in Sweetwater with a DPU, and it was certainly impressive leaving town.  Now it was time for us to leave town in the opposite direction.  It turned out to be a good idea to have gone after these two trains, as the trip home under darkened skies yielded no more trains.