Last week one of my photos turned up on Pinterest after being cropped with the watermark removed and was innocently posted on Facebook’s “Texas Railroad History” group. Welcome to the Internet and the lack of concern with respecting copyrights. Anyway, I identified and claimed the photo of Fort Worth & Western’s ex-SP 2-6-0 number 2248 taken during a rare 8-inch snowstorm in the Metroplex.
The TRH group administrator asked if I would share the original photo, and I did so along with a few others. Now in this blog post I will add even more photos from the steam and snow event on February 14, 2004. Knowing the crew well I called engineer Troy Minnick and confirmed the train would run to the Stockyards that day in spite of low ridership due to the storm.
When I arrived in Grapevine the crew was over by the shop building making a snowman on the pilot of the 2248. I had conductor Gary McCord (left) and engineer Troy Minnick (right) pose with their creation. I think Gary may have been contemplating me as his next snowball target,
After the train was spotted at the depot for a 1:00 pm departure, I noticed the wet snow was sticking to exposed surfaces.
At 1:00 pm Troy whistled off and opened the throttle to start the train across Main Street in a cloud of steam and smoke.
Driving was slow going this day so I moved ahead to the crossing at North Sylvania Avenue on the northwest side of Fort Worth. As the FWWR photographer I am radio equipped so I requested some smoke from the crew as they passed by. The passage of 16 years here has changed the scene here as the TEXRail mainline and shops are now on the right and a large warehouse exists on the left side.
The train did not have to wait at Tower 60 this day so my next photo was of the train going away at Northeast 23rd Street approaching the Stockyards east wye.
As the train navigated the wye I set up across from the Stockyards for this classic photo. This is the photo that was plagiarized on Pinterest.
Ater dropping the train in the shed the 2248 pulled out to the water tank.
With the water topped off, next was a spin executed by engineer MInnick in the cab and conductor McCord operating the turntable.
Once clear of the turntable the 2248 headed around the outside of the shed to prepare for the run to Eighth Avenue.
Once again due to the road conditions I left right after this photo and drove down to the Trinity River in Forest Park for the wooden trestle shot. I used my radio again to ask Troy to blow down the cylinders for the camera.
I zoomed out for one last photo of the 2248 on this wintry day in Fort Worth. Hopefully some day the 2248 will live again to be enjoyed like this by all.
In the next installment I will share the photos from this day of Union Pacific and Fort Worth & Western operations in the snow.
