With World Cup soccer games and other summer activities coming to North Texas in 2026, Dart and Trinity Metro decided to increase train service to Arlington via the Trinity Railway Express. The Northstar commuter train service in Minneapolis shut down in January due to never recovering ridership after Covid back in 2021. The three agencies struck a deal, and the TRE leased two MPI MP36PHO-3C locomotives along with two Bombardier Cab Cars and six Bombardier coaches until the end of August this year.
On the afternoon of April 2nd, I went down to Fort Worth Central Station and caught one of the two Northstar train sets being tested in regular TRE service. Here is a sequence of it pulling in and then leaving for T&P Station.
Notice a fence has now been added between the TRE and TEXRail tracks to deter pedestrians from cutting across live tracks and hopefully forcing them to use the crosswalk at the north end of the platforms.
I quickly relocated to the east side of the Trinity River bridges and launched the drone to catch the train heading back east to Dallas. As I had hoped, the Northstar trainset was accelerating out of town approaching the river bridges on the south track as the next inbound train was pulling down the north track.
This last photo was the “money shot” with the two trains side by side. Actually, I should say the “no-money shot” as parties unknown stripped off my copyright mark on Facebook and the photo appeared as uncredited in several publications, none of which showed any interest in correcting the situation let alone paying me for its use.
I understand when the games start up TRE will start running four car trains.
