Blog

My friend Ethan Whetstone was in Fort Worth on Saturday August 22nd and I met him in the morning down south of Tower 55. As I have spent a lot of time there over the past thirty years I decided to just watch while Ethan kept busy photographing. After a while we moved over to the T&P Depot platform where both TRE and TEXRail put in an appearance.

Next we moved north to the linear park under the railroad bridges on the south side of the Trinity River. Fortunately the city had recently mowed the tall grass here so it was easier to move about off the paved trail. Ethan caught a TEXRail train and we were both ready when Amtrak 821 passed by on the last leg of its trip south from Oklahoma City on the BNSF. Ethan set up on the embankment while I stayed down by the trail.

Staying in the shade under the UP Choctaw Sub Main One bridge, I caught a northbound BNSF transfer job on the UP Duncan Sub heading back to North Yard from Peach Yard.

Before long a loaded coal train came down the BNSF Fort Worth Sub from Saginaw just as a UP train left Peach northbound on the Duncan Sub. With the coal train being my target I took a quick grab shot of the UP train looking under the Choctaw Main One bridge to my right.

With only seconds to spare I swiveled to the left for this photo.

The coal loads whined on by and a few minutes later the DPU’s were winding up to full throttle to shove up the hill as they passed Ethan’s position.

A northbound vehicle train was waiting at the north end of double track at CP Bredenberg. It had been there for both Amtrak and the loaded coal train so it wasted no time as soon as a green signal was displayed to move up to Saginaw.

It was now around 2:00 pm and I had other tasks to accomplish Saturday afternoon so I said goodbye to Ethan and a good morning of railfanning!