Friday, May 14th was a mostly sunny day and the railfan social media was alive with multiple targets of opportunity in the Fort Worth area. A military train was westbound on the KCS scheduled to get on the BNSF at Metro and run to Alliance Yard before leaving for California on the Wichita Falls Sub. Also on the Wichita Falls Sub sometime in the late afternoon a westbound BNSF intermodal would leave Alliance Yard heading for California and the lead unit would be BNSF 6022, one of the 25th Anniversary heritage units. Finally Amtrak 822 would be running north out of Fort Worth to Oklahoma City with Amtrak P42DC heritage unit number 184 facing south on the rear end.
The next day on Saturday the weather was forecast to become overcast with several straight days of heavy rain so I decided to head north in the afternoon to see how many of these special moves I could catch without too much effort. Knowing that friends would let me know when the intermodal would leave Alliance and that Amtrak would leave Fort Worth at 5:25 PM I headed towards Ponder with the intention of catching the military train there as the first of the three interesting train movements.
Along the way I stopped at the GE locomotive plant’s delivery track where two CP and two NS rebuilt units were waiting for the BNSF to pick them up.
I knew from the radio the military train was waiting on the KCS at Metro and that the BNSF dispatcher was going to meet two trains at Ponder, so when I arrived I parked at the food court where a nice open view of the main and siding was available. I heard both trains call the approach signals on the radio, and the southbound which turned out to be an empty windmill blade train arrived first and held the main for the meet.
The northbound was an empty grain train and since it was obscured by the empty blade train and I decided to drive two miles north to a location next to the track where a nice patch of flowers existed in the foreground to get a better photo of it.
I heard on the radio that as soon as the northbound passed the switch at South Wye, the military train would come out on the BNSF main and head my way before taking the siding at Ponder for Amtrak. I lined up another nice flower photo when the military train arrived at my location at 5:25 pm led by a nice pair of KCS units.
A large contingent of M1 Abrams tanks followed behind the power.
Many support vehicles followed and soon the rear end passed by as the train slowed to enter the siding at Ponder.
With the afternoon’s first special train now crossed off the list, I drove south on FM 156 to a nice open area north of Justin to wait for Amtrak 822. While I was parking I received word that the intermodal train with BNSF number 6022 leading was now leaving Alliance Yard bound for the Wichita Falls Sub just west of my location. I did not have long to wait here and Amtrak 822 raced by at straight up 6:00 pm with184 bringing up the rear.
Now it was two down and one to go! Even though the intermodal train had left Alliance Yard about 15 minutes earlier, I had the advantage as it had to go south to Saginaw before turning northwest towards Wichita Falls. I had more than enough time to head on down to Justin and turn west on FM 407 to reach the Wichita Falls Sub a few miles north of Rhome. I scouted around and found a nice open spot just off US 287 with a small patch of flowers in the foreground. I had about a twenty minute wait for the intermodal train to come to me at 6:48 pm.
I decided to follow the train to Herman siding just east of Decatur, and I pulled over at the east end of the siding with just a few moments to spare.
The intermodal proceeded to take the siding at Herman and pulled on down to the west end where I took a few final photos.
My Friday triple play now successfully accomplished, as it was after 7:00 pm I decided to head on home for a late supper. Indeed the next morning the skies were overcast and we got close to five inches of rain at our house over the following four days.
