October 29th, 2022 was my last day of this round trip to Arizona as I would arrive back at home this night. Not wanting to waste any daylight I was away from the motel before sunrise. This worked out well as I stopped at the community of Tiaban east of Fort Sumner. The low area just south of the grade crossing where I parked at 6:56 am was saturated with fog below the first glow of sunrise.
The Southern Transcon is so busy it rarely disappoints, and I was rewarded with a westbound train at 6:58 am.
I only made it a few miles further east before meeting another westbound, but the light had improved a bit at 7:07 am.
I was about halfway between Tiaban and Melrose when the sun appeared above the horizon at 7:16 am. I managed to record this with the glint of an eastbound train I had missed receding in the distance.
My next stop was at the Highway 267 grade crossing on the east side of Melrose as a westbound sped through town at 7:35 am on Main Two.
I heard another westbound not far behind this train and decided to drop back to the west of Melrose for this view at 7:48 am where I worked in a few sunflowers and the distant elevator in town.
There was a single DPU on this westbound on Main Two, and as I composed this photo of it going away at 7:50 am I noticed the dot of an eastbound headlight on the horizon to the left.
At 7:53 am the eastbound train split the signals at milepost 682 travelling on Main One.
I turned east for the glint light view as the head end was passing through Melrose.
A few minutes later one more westbound crossed over to Main One in Melrose and I decided it was time to head for Clovis.
I passed through Clovis without seeing anything interesting, but stopped just across the state line in Farwell, Texas to compose this scene of an eastbound train. I framed it with the city limits sign on the left and the appropriate arrow on the right pointing towards the intermodal’s next stop in Amarillo.
Later on after putting Lubbock in the rear-view mirror I spotted a headlight as I was coming into Slaton, so I detoured onto the business route through town. It turned out to be the local power with an old yellow warbonnet leading.
I wonder if this locomotive is having banking problems since it is marked “NSF” for Non-Sufficient Funds? Bad railroad humor?
As I crossed the tracks at the east side of Slaton one more time before heading back to Highway 84, I was surprised when the lights and bells started up and the gates came down. I managed to put the SUV in park and hop out for this grab shot of an eastbound ballast train that had snuck out of Lubbock without my knowing about it.
I quickly got back on Highway 84 and raced east past Southland to FM 211 where I turned back east towards the overpass where this rural road passes over the west end of Buenos siding. I had been wanting to get a drone shot here of a train coming downgrade off of the escarpment, but there was no time for that today as I only had about a minute to park and set up for this DSLR photo.
I let the ballast train go at this point, and my next photo opportunity turned out to be at the old underpass near Sweetwater airport on the UP’s Toyah Subdivision as an eastbound train passed overhead.
If you look closely, you can see evidence of the ex-Texas & Pacific and Missouri Pacific heritage of this line.
At the west end of the BNSF’s ex-ATSF Sweetwater yard, the power for Texas & Oklahoma’s line south to the cement plant at Maryneal was parked and shut down for the weekend.
Listening to the UP on the radio I heard the eastbound I had captured west of town was still in the process of changing crews at their office and would meet a westbound at the Sweetwater siding. I parked just east of the crew change point at the site of the long-gone T&P passenger station as the eastbound started to move.
All that remains now are the steps and floor along with a historical marker. I included all of these as the westbound pulled down a few minutes later to perform its own crew change.
The westbound had an interesting unit on the rear of the consist. Except for the UP-renumbering patch, this unit is still pure Southern Pacific AC4400CW and started its career in 1995 as SP 257.
I arrived back home just under three hours later and very pleased with the photographic results from the past week!
