FL9

Today’s blog photo was taken just a little over one-half hour ago at 4:39pm on the way home from work in Boaz Park in Benbrook of a westbound UP merchandise train with a CSX GEVO leading.

I picked up a Canon Powershot SD870is at a close-out sale for CompUSA so as to have a small camera I could easily carry everywhere without risking damage or theft to the DSLR’s.  The train was already making around 50mph, but that was not a problem as the camera has practically zero shutter lag.  I think I made a good buy, but you be the judge.

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.

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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.

As the FWWR Tolar Turn approached Cresson we drove on ahead and set up for this shot of it arriving in town.  We all framed the power between the now-abandoned CTC signals that once protected this junction with the Godley Sub coming in from Cleburne on the right.

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