On Tuesday April 26th the next day after the Tower 55 meeting, I was out taking photos for a client and happened to be at the TRE Bell station in Hurst when at 3:59pm, Amtrak 22 blew through the station at track speed eastbound towards Dallas.
I continued on with my other photo work and finished up just before 5:00pm near the Highway 183 and Interstate 820 interchange in northeast Fort Worth. It was then I heard over the radio that a southbound BNSF 17-car officer’s special was leaving Alliance Yard heading south towards Tower 55. I made record time in the rush hour traffic, and was in position just north of Tower 55 when the special came into view at 5:23 pm.
After this photo with the Fort Worth sign, I quickly relocated further south for this view of more of the train. I had thought of launching the drone to get the entire train in one photo but decided to work from the ground here for greater mobility and had another idea for the drone.
My “Hail Mary” pass idea was to see if I could beat the train to the Brazos River bridge south of Rio Vista and use the drone there to capture the entire train on the majestic bridge. I made use of the Chisholm Trail Parkway and was ahead of the train when I left Rio Vista in the rear mirror, but the train put on a burst of passenger speed and it beat me to the bridge by about one minute. Ergo the blog title quoting actor Don Adams as Agent 86 in the old TV show “Get Smart” when he would frequently say in mock frustration, “Missed it by that much!”.
The passenger train had made an overtaking meet with a loaded coal train south of Fort Worth, so I waited only about ten minutes before launching the drone a few minutes before to get this photo at 6:39 pm.
Well, all the cars in the train are silver like a passenger train, right? That is what I told myself anyway during the hour drive back home.