When I first looked outside on the morning of Wednesday August 5th, I could see clouds to the north but the skies were sunny elsewhere. I felt like getting out for a few hours, and listening to the railroad radio it sounded like the BNSF Fort Worth Sub south of Tower 55 would be busy. It took me about 25 minutes to drive to Joshua just north of Cleburne. The clouds had followed along and blocked any chance of full sun, but I decided to not let that deter me.
I parked at one of my favorite spots and within a minute of turning off the engine, I heard the distinctive sound of an older K5LA horn approaching. This meant probably something other than a BNSF locomotive and sure enough a minute later a Temple to Tulsa manifest train came by at 9:42am northbound with two older Norfolk Southern Dash 9-44CW’s up front.
Eleven minutes later at 9:53am the quiet here was once again broken by BNSF ES44AC number 5798 leading the Fort Worth to Cleburne local back northbound.
A short time passed and a third northbound was approaching, but this time it took the siding and stopped in the clear of all crossings. With a train now here at Joshua and the two that had already passed in the sidings at Crowley and Birds, it seemed clear from the radio that the next train would be a southbound. Since this spot was in the middle of the siding, I did not want to be cut off from photographing one train by the other.
I moved north of the siding to the area behind the Joshua athletic complex where at 10:54am I captured this southbound corn syrup train with two units up front and one DPU with a bit of sun on its flank.
I heard there was another southbound waiting for clearance at Tower 55 and that all the northbounds would move up one siding. Sure enough at 11:07 what turned out to be an empty rock train heading back to Oklahoma rolled by northbound with an opposite arrangement of one ES44AC up front and two DPU’s pushing on the way to the siding at Crowley.
The radio indicated another northbound had moved up to the Joshua siding south of me and that a southbound vehicle train still waiting at Tower 55 would be the next train here. Luckily I brought reading material as the train with a Norfolk Southern ES44DC / ES44AC combo did not make an appearance until 12:26pm.
Shortly after the passage of the vehicle train, the northbound in the Joshua siding started to move and ES44C4 number 7980 rolled by at 12:38pm.
I saw a matched set of five new and clean BNSF hopper cars approaching and could not resist the photo.
Listening to the radio it seemed like nothing else would be coming soon, so I decided to call it quits after six trains worth of no-contact railfanning and head home for a solitary lunch.
