Overnight starting on Wednesday, February 2nd, a well anticipated front arrived that brought us rain first followed by freezing rain, sleet and finally some snow this morning, Thursday the 3rd. My first plan was that if we received enough snow overnight to cover the ground and flock the trees that I would drive the city streets from home to North Richland Hills to photograph TEXRail under those conditions.
By early Thursday morning a transition to snow had not happened, leaving roads white and slippery with layers of ice and sleet while the surrounding scenery was an ice-covered winter brown. Some snow was forecast before all precipitation ended, but by 7:00 am I decided not to make the long and slow drive to catch TEXRail as with minimal snow the effort would not result in the desired results. I decided instead to stick close to home and see what I could catch on the UP’s Baird Sub.
I took care of chores around the house and by the time I arrived at Iona siding an eastbound Z train was already starting downhill into Fort Worth. I had just missed that train, but the radio let me know it would be meeting a westbound Z train at Davidson Yard. I set up at the “S” curve just east of Iona where a snow band preceding the end of the storm started dropping big flakes around 10:00 am. A few minutes later at 10:06 am the westbound Z train roared up the hill passing a small tree encased in ice.
One benefit of using a higher resolution digital camera (Canon 5D Mark IV at 30 megapixels in Raw format in my case in my case) is the ability to reasonably zoom (Canon 24-105mm L lens in my case) in on a photo without losing any detail. In this case I wanted a closer view of the train charging up the hill in addition to this photo with the frozen tree. Rather than zooming out for the distant composition and then having to zoom back in and refocus and recompose for this view, I simply used the crop tool in Adobe Lightroom to create this alternative from the same digital negative. Do you like both or do you favor one over the other?
A pair of UPS trailers were a few of many on this train.
This train exceeded 10,000 feet and two more units were busy pushing on the rear at milepost 259.
The dispatcher came over the radio to let the Z train know they would be holding at Iona for a bit as an eastbound merchandise train between Preble and Weatherford had come up on some fool riding an ATV down the middle of the track ahead of it. I could not here all the details, but the train was able to stop short of the ATV which was now disabled close to the track and the Weatherford police and fire departments had been called to remove it and its operator. I drove to the west end of Iona where the Z train was stopped and launched the drone for this aerial view just before the dispatcher called them that he was going to move their train up to Weatherford.
I had time to land the drone and move on ahead to Aledo for these views as the train passed through the deserted downtown area. This is the first time I can remember catching the same Z train three times over a distance of only five miles.
Next I drove back to Iona where I parked off the road about in the middle of the siding. The temperature was a brisk 21 degrees with a wind chill of 12 degrees when I took this photo at 12:01 pm as the train passed milepost 261.
Three units on the point with a locally rebuilt C44ACM leading and one more locomotive two-thirds of the way back in this long train kept it moving steadily upgrade from Aledo to the crest of the hill close behind me.
Walking back to the Explorer in the painfully numbing cold I paused for these shots of a fence and a tree encased in ice.
From the hilltop here at the middle of the siding my radio was able to pick up the dispatcher talking to the westbound Z train I had photographed earlier that it would be holding at Preble to meet one more eastbound Z train, the ZLCAI Los Angeles to Atlanta. I scouted around and set up just east of the now removed private grade crossing close to the east end of the siding. I got out after the train was past Aledo and once again nearly froze as the train seemed to be taking a long time to get here. When it did come into view at 1:16 pm with four units up front, I was surprised to see it was in the siding and slowing to a stop.
The fourth unit was another AC44ACM rebuilt from an old core unit at the Wabtec plant in north Fort Worth.
I am sure the unusually long delay to a Z train was due to the weather’s effect on Davidson Yard as the westbound it would meet here in the form of an intermodal heading to Santa Teresa, NM did not arrive until 1:50 pm. I framed the train as it came uphill out of an ice-encrusted “tree tunnel”.
Once again a very long train with a single DPU about two-thirds of the way back.
A few minutes after the meet was completed the eastbound ZLCAI drifted out of the siding to keep its appointment for a crew change in Mesquite.
It did not sound like any other trains were nearby so I decided it was time to call it a day and head home to warm up and have a late lunch.
