Blog

Indeed it has been two months since I added anything here, but I have a good excuse this time.  I have been preoccupied as my day job for the past 23.5 years as a computer and telecom systems manager for a local company ended on January 2, 2015.  Comparable IT jobs for someone who turned 60 this month can be hard to find, so I decided to take my photography business full time for industrial and other clients.

This move has been welcomed by the FWWR, the UP and especially the BNSF with whom I now have a contract to photograph and write for their internal publications such as the BNSF Railway magazine.  I have already been busy photographing the BNSF’s Alliance Yard new main line project here close to home.  I have other prospects lined up inside and outside the railroad industry, so things are presently looking good!

The down side is the photos I have been taking for the BNSF now belong to them up front, so I cannot readily share them here as I did in the past.  What I can share over the next few posts are an abundance of local Texas snow photos from the past week.  Or at least the pitifully small amounts that qualify as snow here compared to the rest of the country.  Hopefully one year BNSF will have to bring their rotary plow to Texas.

For now, starting overnight on Sunday the 22nd we experienced a sleet storm that deposited between 1/2 inch of the white stuff on roads and exposed areas by morning on Monday the 23rd.  I drove over to Iona on the UP Baird Sub and before long caught the UP 8063 East passing the east end of the siding.

After lunch I caught a meet at Iona between an eastbound merchandise train tied down in the siding with UP SD9043MAC 3625 up front while the ZAILC “Laser” led by UP Sd70ACe 8419 and two NS units headed west down the main.

Two days later on Wednesday the 25th snow flurries blew through the area, and on the way to a meeting at BNSF I happened to catch a westbound ballast train pulling into the siding at Iona.  I first caught the train just past the east end, and then again in the cut at the west end of the siding.

They were waiting on Maintenance of Way with track and time out ahead of them, and I had to move on to be at my meeting.  More and better winter weather was upcoming on Friday the 27th in the next installment!