Monday January 2nd turned out to be a beautiful day to be off from work. FWWR decided to run a 70+ car Dublin Turn that afternoon, so I decided to give chase along with David Hawkins and Ron Thur. Working with the afternoon light I decided to catch the train for the first time at milepost 8 on the Dublin Sub about halfway down the siding at Primrose. David and Ron joined me there about ten minutes before the train arrived at 2:16 pm with southwest Fort Worth in the background.
The power turned out to be GP38-2 2006 leading SD40-2 2015, SD40R 2016 and SD40-2 2018. We piled back into our vehicles and finally got ahead of the train again just west of Mustang Creek as it climbed the grade towards Cresson.
Around the curve from the grade crossing on Winscott-Plover Road we stopped for this sequence of shots.
Our next spot was on the east side of the Highway 377 grade crossing in Cresson as the train passed the switch to the Cleburne Sub.
Next up on our chase was the bridge over Lake Granbury as seen from the adjacent Business 377 bridge. As this photo would be going to FWWR for their own use I software scrubbed all the grafitti off of the bridge for this pristine view.
As the train started up the 1% westbound grade between Granbury and Tolar they lost the 2006 which slowed them down to less than 10 mph and allowed us to get these shots near the Colony Road crossing.
We easily moved ahead to a private crossing about two miles further west for this sequence as the train crept by with the three SD40’s shoving the silent 2006 hard in Run 8 while laying down copious amounts of sand on the rails.
Shortly after this the train crested the grade at the east end of Tolar, and by this time we were waiting downtown to get this shot of the station sign at 4:10 pm.
We let the train go here and as it headed on towards Dublin we made our way back towards Fort Worth. We made one brief stop in Cresson to photograph the third new unit recently purchased by the FWWR, an ex-SAL, ex-CSX GP40 now the FWWR 2020 to be painted next spring.
David and Ron had along drive yet back to the northeast side of the Metroplex while I was only ten minutes away from home after my first successful chase for 2012.
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We saw a similar lash-up enter Dublin Monday night, with 2002 and 2011 on either end. They dropped 2011, added 2020 and led the consist back with 2002 on the point. My son got to say hello to the engineer. It made his day. I’ve always been impressed with the FWWR crews’ friendliness, especially to the younger railfans.
We’ve christened 2020 “Old Yeller.” Maybe it will stick…