Blog

Thursday February 8th was a warm and sunny day so I decided to take advantage of the second day of the Amtrak detour and catch trains 22 and especially 21 in one of my favorite spots on the UP Fort Worth Sub.  County Road 400 just north of Grandview on the west side of I35 is a great spot for southbounds in the afternoon coming through the truss bridge over Chambers Creek.  There used to be more opportunities for this shot in the old days when this was the combined Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Missouri Pacific main between Fort Worth and Waco.  Today this UP subdivision hosts primarily northbound trains so catching train 21 southbound coming out of the bridge would be the high point of the afternoon.  I drove down early to engineer a shot of train 22 coming out of the sun and ended up having a great lunch at the R&K Cafe right across the street from my chosen spot at the north end of the Grandview siding.  After lunch I set up with the intention of getting the signal hut with its “Grandview” sign in the photo with train 22.  First up a northbound UP empty grain train pulled into the siding to let train 22 overtake it and I pulled out the 100-400mm zoom on my Canon 70D for this view of the meet a few minutes later.

I dropped the 70D to my left side on its strap and pulled up the Canon 5D Mark IV with  a 24-105 zoom on the right side for this shot a few seconds later at 2:14 pm.

Shadow control in post-processing greatly reduced the back lighting in the RAW version in this photo.  Always shoot in RAW mode if possible to get the maximum leverage when you process your photos!  I quickly switched back to the 70D with the long zoom and easily captured this going away shot.  No problem figuring out where this photo was taken!

The dispatcher told the northbound freight they would be stuck here for train 21 so I moved north to the County Road 400 crossing.  I settled in to do some reading while 22 continued on to meet 21 at Wrenn siding on the south side of Fort Worth.  The dispatcher eventually revealed his plan to let a short Fort Worth to San Antonio freight follow 21 to Grandview where they would hold the main while the northbound already here and another empty grain train passed on the siding in a four train meet.  Even though this route takes the train directly through Waco, capacity issues due to fewer and further apart passing sidings appear to make this UP routing less desirable than the normal path over the BNSF between  Fort Worth and Temple.  At 3:30 pm I took the photo I came and waited for as 21 flew across Chambers Creek in perfect light.

The going away view shows our proximity to I35.

  At 3:45 pm the FWSA came through to subsequently pull down the main behind the now stopped train 21.  I zoomed out to include the unique landscaping of the landowner including a wheel set from a derailment back in the 1980’s.

Too bad the power was not reversed!

At 4:01 pm the first and long delayed empty grain train finally got to leave for Fort Worth while passing milepost 216.

At 4:14 the second empty grain train came by the County Road 400 crossing having just released Amtrak 21 and the FWSA to continue on south to Waco.

With both Texas Eagles and three freights on the memory card I called it a day and headed back home to meet my wife for dinner.  On Friday for the final day of this diversion I will hang around Fort Worth and hopefully catch the meet between 21 and 22 that both previous days has taken place at Wrenn in south Fort Worth.