On Saturday March 20th friend Robert Holzweiss and I had a safety briefing to attend at 11:00 am in College Station, so we decided to do some railfanning both before and after the meeting. We started out a little around 8:00 am and listening to the railroad radio yielded the information that two northbound UP trains would meet a southbound at Wade siding just south of College Station. We set up at the south end of the siding before the arrival of the UP 8895 North just before 9:00 am.
The southbound was already stopped in the siding and the northbound empty unit train had a high green signal.
The northbound signal cycled back to green, and the UP 2739 North rolled by at 9:24 am with a manifest train.
Once the northbound had cleared up, the southbound rolled out of the siding at 9:33 am. I captured one view here and then Robert and I hopped into the Explorer and drove a mile or so south to this curve for a second view.
At this point with nothing else close by, Robert and I decided to head back to town for the safety meeting to do with the two day Bush 4141 unloading and delivery event that would begin Sunday morning. Once the meeting was finished we drove back south after hearing another northbound would be leaving Navasota soon. We stopped across from the Millican Reserve Park where I found this tree to frame up my photo at 1:26 pm.
This turned out to be a very long merchandise train and a mid-train DPU rolled by at 1:28 pm.
The radio now informed us that this northbound would be going to Wade just north of us to meet another southbound that would then meet a second northbound at Millican siding just to the south of us. We drove south to the town of MIllican at the south end of the siding and before long the southbound train appeared in the siding to our north where it stopped just out of camera range. At 2:06 pm an empty military train came by northbound with a long string of flat cars.
Once the empty military train had passed the southbound throttled up and came back out onto the main.
While this meet had been going on another southbound had slipped in to the siding at Wade just to our north. We made it back to the north end of MIllican siding where at 2:34 pm we caught this loaded grain train bound for the Houston area.
There would be a gap in trains now so we drove back to Bryan for a late lunch and then went back to the tracks at Bush Junction after hearing a southbound coming down the ex-SP Bryan Sub from Hearne. At 4:39 pm the UP 8375 leading a unit grain train rolled through Bryan and onto the ex-MP line from Valley Junction.
A few minutes later two DPU’s idled by bringing up the rear.
This train stopped at the end of Main Two for a southbound train out of Valley Junction to pass by on Main One before continuing on south. Robert had an appointment for around 90-minutes, so I dropped him off near the A&M campus and drove over to the parking garage directly west across the main line from Kyle Field. By the time I made it to the top level of the garage the first southbound had passed, but I was in time to catch the UP 8375 South again a few minutes later.
One more southbound out of Valley Junction had arrived in town and I held my perch for the UP 8973 (only two numbers apart!) with a merchandise train at 6:00 pm.
I circled my way down out of the garage and picked up Bob a few minutes later. Sunday morning we would need to be on site before 9:00 am for part one of the event, the loading of the Bush 4141 onto a special trailer and subsequent move to the Library grounds.