My young friend Zane Ferguson celebrated his 17th birthday on Sunday April 21st. Zane is a fan of Trinity Metro, the organization that provides public transportation services for Tarrant County, Texas including bus services along with TEXRail and the Trinity Railway Express. For his birthday, Zane had asked me if it would be possible to tour the bus maintenance facility and the TEXRail maintenance facility.
Trinity Metro was more than happy to grant Zane’s birthday request, and the tours were scheduled for the morning of Tuesday April 23rd in Fort Worth. I met Zane and his mother at the bus facility east of downtown at 9:00 am. We toured the dispatch area and the customer service center before heading out on the lot. Here is a photo of Zane in the driver’s seat of one of the busses.
Outside one of the “Molly the Trolley” busses, Zane and his mother are flanked by our tour guides Frank and Crystal.
We were shown one of the “Access” busses and Zane got to operate the wheelchair lift and sit in the driver’s seat.
We walked through the mechanical bays, and then while crossing the lot I posed Zane in front of the historic bus that is kept for special occasions.
We finished up here and were treated to a ride in one of the small passenger busses to the TEXRail maintenance facility north of downtown. Here is Zane in the engineer’s seat of one of the Stadler FLIRT trains that was in for maintenance.
Before we detrained, our tour guides presented Zane with a TEXRail conductor’s cap as a birthday gift.
As we moved through the shop area I posed Zane between two trains inside the building.
At the end of the TEXRail shop tour, we took a group photo with Zane and his mom along with Trinity Metro and Herzog personnel.
We took our bus back to our starting point at the bus shop where we broke up after many “Thank You’s”! Zane, his mom and I went to lunch and then went trackside on the Union Pacific’s Choctaw Sub just south of the Interstate 820 bridge in Haltom City where after a short wait we caught a southbound freight led by Up 1995, the Chicago & North Western heritage SD70ACe. The engine was clean and in good paint condition in this three photo sequence.
Leaving here to drive to Fort Worth Central Station, we heard on the radio that Amtrak 22 was about to leave eastbound for Dallas over the TRE. We set up at the west end of Sylvania siding for this photo a few minutes later.
Over the next hour we watched and photographed TEXRail and TRE trains making their station stops at Central Station. Zane’s favorite TEXRail train is number 108 named “Spike”, and he was able to catch it coming through just before 4:00 pm.
While “Spike” was boarding passengers I captured Zane with the train as a background.
As it was now 4:00 pm and Fort Worth’s evening “rush hours” would be starting soon, Zane and his mom left for their motel and I headed home. Zane was very happy after a birthday gift to remember for a long time!
