FL9

Yesterday’s blog pictures consisted entirely of EMD locomotives, while today’s are all GE products.  While sitting at the County Road 401 crossing west of Taylor I thought Amtrak 22 northbound would be next, but then I heard a rumble growing in volume coming out of town in the opposite direction.  I repositioned to the outside of the curve, and in a minute the UP 7502 South along with two more big GE’s roared by with an empty rock train.

I stepped closer after the last car had passed for this going away shot of the string of empty rock hoppers highballing towards Austin.

With a northbound still at Hestes I decided this train must be going at least to Round Rock for Amtrak 22, and after reading Railpace for a few minutes the radio confirmed this to be true as it took the siding there.  After a period of time a K5LA cound be heard in the distance, and shortly P42 204 swung into view and traversed a small sag with its Superliners in tow.

I quickly drew back with the zoom to capture the whole train in the curve.

Swinging around, I got the high level cars snaking around the curve on the approach to Taylor.

It sounded like the poor northbound at Hestes was still going to be stuck for awhile, so I headed on back to Austin to get some work done.  On the way I heard the UP 7502 exiting onto the Austin Western at McNeil to head west towards the rock quarries.