On Monday, July 25th in 2022 I left home near Aledo, TX to begin a two day drive to Flagstaff, AZ to do some work for a customer. My goal for this first day was to drive to Fort Sumner, NM. I was not in a rush so I drove through Abilene and stopped for a few photos of the Southern Switching Company. There was nothing going on at 11:00 am as I photographed their EMD SW1200 (1233) and two ex-Army EMD NW2’s (1865 and 1866).
Next up a few blocks away was the old Abilene & Southern depot, still up for sale.
At the west end of Abilene in the Bagdad Siding the Fort Worth to Abilene local was tied down with three SD40N’s up front.
My next stop was in the small town of Tye where I was glad to find the model depot built many years ago by a local citizen was still intact next to the UP Baird Sub.
I pulled into Sweetwater shortly after noon and quickly stumbled onto the BNSF local jub coming back to their yard from a customer at the south end of town on the old KCM&O heading to Maryneal. It is obvious neither unit has been near a paint booth in quite a while!
On the radio I heard an eastbound UP intermodal train stopping for a crew change. I set up east of the depot at the west end of the Sweetwater siding and captured the train leaving town at 1:20 pm.
What the radio had not alerted me to was the fact the Abilene to Roscoe local was tucked in right behind this eastbound on its way back home. I was caught off guard on my way out of town and could not catch them in Sweetwater. I decided the two SD40N’s looked too nice to pass up and that the light would be better on them between Eskota and Trent. I backtracked on I20 and easily beat them to a good location where I worked in a few mailboxes as the short train passed by at 1:54 pm. Note the creative use of an old auger.
After this I was back on the road again towards New Mexico. I pulled over briefly for this view of an eastbound BNSF bare table train on the Slaton Sub surrounded by wind machines at Pyron.
I got back on Highway 84 and did not stop again until 4:00 pm when approaching Slaton I spotted one of South Plains Railroad’s ex-ATSF GP20’s parked right next to the access road in perfect light.
I did not see any trains worth photographing in Lubbock, but I did catch this little 0-4-0 near the BNSF yard.
With Lubbock and Shallowater in the rear view mirror, as I approached the wide spot in the road named Roundup (named after a western activity or the week killer?) I saw the triangle head and ditch lights of an eastbound train coming towards me. With closing speed in mind I managed to stop in the right spot to quickly compose this photo at 5:03 pm with the community’s highway sign.
From here I saw no more photographable trains all the way to today’s destination. I pulled into Fort Sumner at 6:00 pm Mountain Time and checked into my favorite Billy The Kid Motel. The evening low light was starting to look good so I drove west of town to a pullout off of Highway 60 about 1/4 mile from the tracks where I had a good view of the twin Pecos River bridges.
As I have many photos taken from the ground over the years from this spot of trains crossing the river I decided to use the drone for a new angle. At 6:36 pm a westbound train crossed trhe river on the old bridge and started upgrade out of the river valley with Fort Sumner in shadow behind it.
I landed and changed batteries before sending the drone back up. I only had to wait a few minutes until 6:57 pm when I spotted an eastbound train coming downgrade to cross the river on the new second bridge completed a few years ago.
I especially like the first two photos of the previous sequence showing the wide open spaces with the distant thunderstorm. After taking the final view of this train going away into Fort Sumner, I turned the drone to the southwest for this photo of the storms and Highway 60 snaking away towards Vaughn.
Turning the drone back to the northeast I saw another westbound coming through town and I snapped the radio controlled shutter release at 7:03 pm.
Knowing the only restaurant in town would close in an hour I decided this was a good time to end the day’s photography and get some food and sleep before continuing my journey west the next morning.
