After a good night’s rest in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, I checked out of the Billy the Kid Motel on the morning of Saturday, October 22nd in 2022 and heard on the radio that a few trains were heading my way. At 7:38 am I captured this westbound intermodal crossing the Pecos River. Very little of the massive bridge can be seen from this angle as the train leaves Fort Sumner behind.
A few seconds later, the westbound roared upgrade passing over Highway 60 heading compass south in the low morning light.
A few minutes later the first of three eastbound trains drifted downgrade at this same location.
Before the second eastbound arrived, I had time to relocate to a spot west of the depot where the tracks curve back to the east after passing over the Pecos River.
This train turned out to be one of the very long intermodals and had two DPU’s pushing on the rear in this view looking east towards the Fort Sumner depot.
For the third eastbound I moved east of the depot so I could include it in my composition with the good morning light.
The fenced off materials storage area to my immediate left was appropriately named.
It was now time to cover some of the roughly 500 miles between me and my “base camp” for several days in Flagstaff, Arizona. My next pause for a rail photo was in Vaughn, New Mexico where at 9:31 am a westbound grain train on the ex-SP now UP mainline from Kansas City to El Paso was passing under the BNSF after a crew change.
A single DPU was shoving on the rear end.
Just a few miles down the road I pulled over on the shoulder of Highway 60 / 285 for this eastbound passing the signal cantilever at West Tejon. Ten minutes sooner and I could have gotten the holy grail over/under view back at Vaughn.
Down the road I pulled over again for an eastbound out of Encino with some nice clouds overhead.
After this photo I had a dry spell for almost two hours all the way west to near Kayser where I stopped at 11:18 am for another eastbound climbing the grade out of Abo Canyon.
Before lunch at Pete’s Cafe in Belen I managed to find a southbound Railrunner about to arrive at the station at the end of the line. This is one of my most favorite commuter rail paint schemes and I have the whole train in HO scale.
After enjoying the always good Mexican food at Pete’s Cafe, I first headed north out of Belen on I25 a short distance to Los Lunas where I headed west on Highway 6 to intercept I40 west of Albuquerque. At 2:02 pm as I was down to the final few miles, I pulled over for this photo of an eastbound intermodal. The San Mateo Mountains tower in the background above the town of Mesita and the ribbon of traffic on I40.
After less than ten miles heading west on I40, westbound traffic came to a complete stop for no visible reason. After an hour here people were out of their vehicles, and as they milled around the word spread there was an 18-wheeler on fire about three miles ahead. I finally used my idle time to take this photo of the Laguna Pueblo at 3:32 pm with the novelty of standing in the middle of the Interstate.
My original plan was to arrive in Flagstaff before dark, but after finally passing a completely burned up tractor trailer after a 90-minute delay, sunset found me approaching Holbrook, Arizona at 6:33 pm. I made a quick exposure through the windshield looking west.
I checked into my hotel in Flagstaff around 8:30 pm and got ready for work the next day.