My railfan plan for today, Monday May 24th was to head over to Joshua on the BNSF at noon to catch the first day with both an Amtrak #21 and #22 since the early days of the pandemic. I needed to go to the Aledo post office first, and while I was getting ready my friend Paul Beverung called to let me know the westbound Abilene Local was switching the elevator in Aledo and had two SD40-2’s for power. I drove quickly to Aledo and arrived in time to be ready when the train left town.
I framed up my first photo at 10:24 am with the old Bryant elevator and downtown Aledo on the left. For the second photo I traversed to the left while savoring the increasingly rare sound of turbocharged EMD 645’s.
I did my business at the post office and as I was heading back east out of town I caught a distant glimpse of a westbound stack train coming out of Iona and the locomotives were orange instead of yellow. BNSF has trackage rights on the UP Baird Sub between Fort Worth and Sweetwater, but their use of them is elusive so I wanted to catch a photo of it. I made a quick U-turn and traffic was in my favor as I was ready a few minutes later when the train passed the Bryant elevator.
With two unanticipated interesting catches already on my memory card, I drove to Joshua and set up just south of downtown. At 12:46 pm the BNSF dispatcher put a northbound empty grain train into the siding here to let Amtrak 22 go around it.
The head end stopped short of the two downtown crossings. With the train stopped next to me I thought of moving to the north end of town, but then I decided to stay here and compose a picture with Amtrak #22 passing the BNSF logo on the hopper car right across from me. It was raining lightly at 1:33 pm as I captured the view I wanted regardless of the train’s 70 mph closing speed.
The empty grain headed on north in Amtrak’s wake and over the radio I heard the dispatcher was going to bring another northbound into the siding here to meet southbound Amtrak #21. Now I did relocate to the north end of town and made this photo of #21 at 2:34 pm, one hour and one minute after the passage of #22.
As the train passed I turned and framed up the going away photo with the northbound manifest train waiting in the siding. On a side note Amtrak #22 had four cars this day while train #21 had five. Both lead units bore the scars of a long career pulling passengers.
After a short wait the dispatcher lined the northbound out of town with the intention of having it meet the southbound Cleburne local at Crowley. The exhaust was rolling up to the sky as the train accelerated out of the siding at 2:50 pm.
I decided to wait for the southbound local before heading home and it passed by at 3:21 pm looking more like a road freight.
With my primary goal accomplished plus the two bonus trains in the morning, it was an excellent day to be out in spite of the rain.
