One week ago today I was out playing in the snow on the BNSF Fort Worth Sub. Today January 17th I was out in the sun on the UP Baird Sub with no snow for hundreds of miles. The occasion was the westbound passage of the Norfolk Southern Railroad’s Norfolk & Southern heritage locomotive number 8114 leading the ZAILC Atlanta to Los Angeles “Laser” intermodal train.
With the experienced knowledge that the train would be basically coming out of the morning sun after it left Fort Worth except for a few locations, I drove west from the house to the siding at Preble, TX about eight miles west of Weatherford. The mainline curves sharply to the southwest just before reaching the siding, and the sun would be almost 3/4 on the nose providing as perfect light as possible without driving much further west. As I had caught this engine with my DSLR three years ago on this same run, I decided to use the drone today for new perspectives.
Preble siding is now 17,188 feet long, and there was a roughly 11,00-foot eastbound intermodal heading to Dallas stopped in the siding with no crossings blocked. This was a good thing as I heard they would be here for three westbounds. I set up about a quarter mile to the east and used a hot box detector several miles further east as my advance warning to launch the drone. I was in position for this photo at 11:44 am of my target train.
To see what the DJI Mavic 2 Pro’s Hasselblad camera was good for in this 1/1000 of a second shot, I zoomed into the camera raw image with these results. Not bad!
The moment after taking the original photo I turned and started to chase the train west at the drone’s maximum speed. this let me get into position with a second or two to spare for this view of the “Z” train meeting the eastbound “I” train in the siding.
While flying the drone back to my location I took this view of the rest of the train.
I drove down to the east end of Preble and at 12:18 the hot box detector announced the approach of a Mesquite to Los Angeles “Z” train. I had the drone waiting at 12:21 pm when the train came around the curve from Weatherford and passed the east switch.
I turned the drone for this view of the double stacks as the train headed west.
And then back east again to catch the UPS and Fedex trailers coming towards the drone.
The third westbound at 12:35 pm turned out to be a Fort Worth to Monahans merchandise train.
Ten minutes later at 12:45 pm the eastbound whistled off and moved down the siding on its way to Dallas.
I followed the train down to the east switch as they accelerated back onto the main.
This train was long enough to have two DPU’s embedded about 2/3 of the way back in the train.
Four trains in a little over an hour here including a heritage unit was pretty good in my estimate as after tomorrow we are supposed to start a week of rainy days.
