Monday Feb 25 2008
Did I forget to mention yesterday what was leading the southbound BNSF grain train that brought us together at Tower 55? A brand new KCSM SD70ACe looking great in the late afternoon low light it emerged into from beneath the interstate overpasses and approached our photo line.
Sunday Feb 24 2008
Late Sunday afternoon the draw of a special grain train on the BNSF caused myself and John Briggs, Brian Tindle and Randy Nelson to come together in the southwest quadrant of Tower 55. As railfan luck would have it, our grain train of interest got a knuckle right behind the Amtrak maintenance shack. Fearing we had grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory, we were encouraged when Amtrak personnel quickly helped the BNSF crew replace the knuckle as the stopped train had Amtrak 822 blocked in at the depot with departure time approaching. Then the UP terminal dispatcher took the grain train’s signal back so he could run a MFWSA train from west to south around the wye in front of us. Soon the view of our quarry was blocked as the UP 4310 South came around the curve with silent Tower 55 in the background.
Saturday Feb 23 2008
The head end brakeman is giving me a friendly wave as the Frisco’s Ardmore, Oklahoma local is leaving town on 04/30/73 heading east over the Ardmore Branch on its way back to the Texas mainline at Madill.
SLSF GP7 592 has two boxcars and a caboose in tow as the local begins the uphill climb away from the AT&SF depot in the background towards the wooden trestle over the Santa Fe mainline that still stands today. The rest of the ex-Frisco trackage in the photo is long gone, and GP7 592 was wrecked a year later in 1974 in Springdale, Arkansas and sold for scrap.
Friday Feb 22 2008
Twenty-seven years ago in Missouri Pacific days the Oklahoma Subdivision of the Red River Division extended roughly 165 miles from Durant to Muskogee, Oklahoma over the old Kansas, Oklahoma & Gulf.
At the time I took this photo on 05/07/81 of a northbound freight with four SD40-2’s passing the southbound approach signal to KO&G Junction in Durant, the MP’s merger into the UP is only a year away. Six years later in 1988 the merger with the M-K-T will foreshadow the complete abandonment of this line in favor of the M-K-T’s parallel and more favorable route.
