Tower 60 in Fort Worth used to have a manned tower controlling its multiple routes but today it is all handled remotely by BNSF and UP dispatchers. I spent some time there on July 16, 2023, and captured some interesting variety. First up for this day was this drone view of TEXRail Train number 108 named “Spike” going away from the camera as it crosses the Trinity River on its way downtown.
This would turn out to be a busy day for UP as a northbound came by and headed up Choctaw Main One towards McAlester, Oklahoma led by an SD70M.
Not far behind was the daily transfer from UP Davidson Yard to BNSF North Yard.
The trailing unit had either been to Mexico or California not long ago.
Before long the UP power came back running light as apparently BNSF did not have anything to send back.
TEXRail’s “Spike” is seen looking across the Duncan and Choctaw Subs and the FWWR connector.
Later on, a northbound BNSF / KCS stack train from Mexico to Chicago rolled over the Trinity River. This new bridge has only been in service for a few days and is part of BNSF’s area double track project and the old through truss bridge is now permanently out of service as the original bridge will be replaced by a duplicate of the new bridge.
The KCS paint on the lead unit is also living on borrowed time after the CP / KCS merger.
The trailing unit was even more rare, a veteran wearing the KCS grey paint scheme that preceeded the newer “Retro Belle” paint scheme.
I sent the drone up one more time to capture yet another northbound UP train on the old BN bridge immediately east of the new and old BNSF bridges.
Just another day of recording visual history as change is inevitable.
