Thursday July 29th offered up an opportunity that does not occur often here on the UP’s Baird Sub near the house. An eastbound intermodal train was powered by four NS units all on the point. I called local railfan Luke Meacham and his parents gave their blessing to his accompanying me out to the Annetta area between Aledo and Weatherford to catch the train late in the afternoon.
I chose for us to catch it passing the signal at milepost 270.5 as the otherwise tall grass has been mowed here. Luke and I received an extra bonus when the UP sent a westbound intermodal out of Davidson that would pass us first at 5:39 pm with just two units up front. A cloud was over the sun so I later employed a bit of help from Lightroom to deal with the shadows.
The two trains met at Weatherford and the same cloud was still hanging around when the eastbound rolled by at 6:15 pm.
The train was not moving very quickly, and so Luke and I loaded up with the hope that we could beat it to the east end of Iona for one more photo. We were even with the head end going through Aledo and beat it to east Iona with about two minutes to spare at 6:38 pm. I first lined up a vertical shot showing the thunderstorm that had popped up in the background.
In retrospect, if I had been thinking intelligently I should have lined up a view with the approaching train and the thunderstorms’ rain column together. However, I was only thinking of the unique power and took just this photo instead of the two I might have come away with.
As the saying goes “hindsight is the best sight”, so I took Luke home and reminded myself not to get tunnel (no pun intended) vision next time.
