FL9

A crew showed up for the SWW 7286 South just as I was leaving, but they were going to have to wait for two northbounds to leave Fort Worth before they could go in, so I headed on down to Saginaw.  A small railfan crowd was present in spite of the cold wind blowing.  Within a few minutes this southbound BNSF mainifest with a Ferromex unit trailing banged across the diamonds and into Saginaw Yard.

A northbound transfer run was next, and I moved out for a side view of the lead SD40-2 to compensate for the winter backlighting.

Included in the train was a cut of around thirty new hopper cars with TILX reporting marks and bearing the logo “VeraSun Energy”.

They showed to have been built this same month, January 2008, and had that new car shine and smell as they rolled on towards Alliance Yard. 

There was a southbound train tied down in the UP siding at Hicks, and the engine consist was worth retracing my steps for.  The lead unit was the familiar Cotton Belt GP40-2 7286 from last Sunday’s Wichita Falls local, except this time with much better light.

The train had a total of seven units, and further back in the consist was this pair of GP60’s lettered for what was originally the parent and the subsidiary.

Cotton Belt 9642 is numbered exactly 100 slots below Southern Pacific 9742 for now, but one day soon either Union Pacific’s patching or painting will put an end to that.

Leaving Saginaw behind on Sunday morning on the way to Rhome I heard an eastbound BNSF freight on the Wichita Falls Sub get a track warrant to leave Avondale and come on down to CP11.  I pulled over at Blue Mound Road and soon photographed a slow merchandise train powered by a GEVO, a C44 and a GP60 B-unit.

(Read on …)

Sunday morning I made plans to meet an eBay seller to pick up two T&P tank cars I had won.  We agreed to get together at the convenience store at the junction of Highways 287 and 407 north of Rhome on the Wichita Falls Sub.  Before noon as I was passing through Saginaw I pulled over on Business 287 when I spotted the BNSF 3158 on the point of a roadrailer train sitting on the lead north of the yard office.  Even though the picture was backlit, it was worth it to me for now as this is one of the ex-BN GP50’s that was modified to increase the interior size of the cab to accomodate a full crew after the demise of the caboose.

I have not seen the inside of one to know if the experiment worked, and it was not repeated beyond a few units as in the end the railroads took the easier course for them of reducing the size of the crew rather than building bigger locomotive cabs.