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Last Saturday July 1st the railfan grapevine indicated a westbound intermodal train coming off the Meridian Speedway and getting on the UP at Shreveport had a Norfolk Southern heritage unit leading.  This time around it was the NS 1074, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western heritage unit.  The projected schedule showed the train would pass through Fort Worth Sunday afternoon in good light, but as often happens this was not to be since this was a low priority “K” train and not a hot “Z” train.

By late Sunday afternoon the train had only made it to Mineola and would not reach Fort Worth until well after dark so I gave up on it.  Monday morning assuming the train was now well west of Fort Worth I headed out to take new progress photographs for the TEXRail light rail project between Fort Worth and DFW airport.  As I was paralleling the UP east of Davidson Yard on the way to start at the T&P building, suddenly I encountered the NS 1074 moving down grade towards the yard.  Since I was setting my own schedule this day I pulled a quick U-turn and followed the train as it pulled down to the west end of Bypass One for a crew change.

As I was already wearing my full PPE, after the crew van picked up the inbound crew I drove down the single-lane one-way road on the north side of the tracks and took this back lit nose shot of the NS 1074 with a BNSF train parked next door in Bypass Two.

With nothing else possible within the tight spacing here I quickly moved on and deciding the best shot with the full sun would be a broadside from the south side of the yard as the train left town.  I moved over to the south side access road and waited patiently as the outbound crew got on and prepared to leave for Sweetwater.  A call to the dispatcher indicated the Fort Worth to West Colton merchandise train in Bypass Five would leave first and the “K” intermodal train would follow.  I was letting the 2 x 2 powered merchandise train roll past in front of me without taking any photos until I spotted that one of the two DPU’s was a new Tier 4 SD70Ace #3036.

   Now it was showtime for the Lackawanna heritage unit and the broadside lighting did provide the best results for this sequence with the sun in the southeastern sky.

Since the merchandise train ahead was climbing the hill to Iona, the NS 1074 had to stop at the red signal at the west end of the yard and this gave me adequate time to relocate to the I820 overpass in Benbrook.  For some reason there was an older SD70M parked in the west end of the Benbrook house track.

I panned left for one more close up view before letting the train go.  You can see a few spots along the side where the paint has flaked off due to age.

Now I resumed my plan to cover all the new TEXRail construction updates between the T&P station and Grapevine.  I finished up at 4:30pm at the site of the upcoming DFW north station just north of Highway 114 which will be located between the end of the line at DFW Terminal B and the Grapevine Main Street Station.  In this view I am looking south towards where the station platform will be with Highway 114 in the background.  My new Explorer is parked on the future right-of-way and displays a required set of Fort Worth transit Authority “TEXRail” magnetic signs.

All in all a pretty good day before the Fourth of July!