Saturday March 19th turned out to be a pretty good day over all. I had been tied up during the latter part of the week when newly rebuilt ex-Amtrak F40’s 130 and 131 began testing on the Trinity Railway Express. I had not heard back if they would be running Saturday morning, but since the sun was out I decided to do the same and went down to Central Station where wearing proper PPE I parked on the east side of the tracks. The two units did not put in an appearance, but I still took photos of TRE and TEXRail trains that I later turned in to my manager at Trinity Metro for their social media. Here are three photos that did not make cut and I held back in my personal files.
Heading back towards Aledo and home, I spotted the UP Missouri Pacific heritage SD70ACe number 1982 leaving Davidson Yard leading an empty rock train west on the Baird Sub. I texted my young friend Luke Meacham as I knew he would want to catch it, and his mom brought him to Aledo where we met up. A yellow over flashing yellow signal in Aledo indicated an eastbound would be taking the siding at Iona to meet the 1982. A few minutes later at 1:02 pm an eastbound train with five units up front roared by upgrade as we got a wave from the engineer.
For me it was about two hours early for optimum light at this location, so I decided I wanted to catch the 1982 passing North Annetta with slightly better light. Luke went with me and we caught the 1982 at one of my favorite spots at 1:30 pm.
I dropped Luke off at his house and headed home myself for a few hours. Around 4:00 pm I heard on the radio the hot westbound ZAILC would be taking the siding at Iona for s short time eastbound intermodal. I decided it would be a good opportunity to fly the drone and quickly drove over to the end of Chase Lane by the west end of Iona siding.
The ZAILC pulled into the clear and stopped, but I did not launch the drone until I heard the eastbound pass the detector in Aledo. This is the eastbound passing up the main at 4:50 pm. You can see my SUV on the left side of the photo as local friends gather to look over my shoulder at the screen.
I panned to the right for this photo of the two trains meeting.
ZAILC started moving towards the main as soon as the last car of the eastbound had passed. I flew west ahead of it and rotated back for this shot of it laid out around the curve.
I landed and packed up before moving on to pick up a few groceries at the market. On the way back home for the last time, as I passed over the Baird Sub in Aledo I looked at the eastbound signal by reflex and it was red. Looping around the westbound side was green so I quickly parked and found a spot for this train in perfect late afternoon light at 5:26 pm.
Low light in the morning and the evening provided the bookends to a good train day.
