Thursday morning August 18th found Troy and I once again down at the Houston Amtrak Station to record the departure of the Big Boy for Beaumont. As this was our last day chasing the train, the plan was to get the 4014 backing out of the station before going straight to the Collingsworth Street Overpass for a signature shot with the Houston skyline as specifically requested by the UP Houston Service Unit. Here are some of the views taken at the station before and during the train’s departure around 8:30 am.
Not being intimately familiar with Houston Streets and traffic on even a normal day without the Big Boy leaving town, we passed on any intermediate locations and went straight to the Collingswood overpass. Other fans soon joined us there and we picked our spots at the bridge rail before the 4014 showed up at 9:44 am. Here are the best shots from my sequence.
Now with the signature requested photo in the bag (or on the memory card in modern terminology) our plan was to catch the train one more time in the area of its next stop at Huffman and then start back for home. Specifically I had decided to try to catch the train crossing the bridge over Lake Houston just west of Huffman as the last shot of the trip.
I did my research in advance on how to get to the ideal spot on the east side of the lake to launch the drone for a bridge shot, but in retrospect we should have simply asked to follow one of the local railfans to that spot. Some of those on the bridge with us made it to the site in time to get the photo, but it was very crowded and Troy and I found ourselves stopped in a line of cars as far as the eye could see about a mile from our goal. I could tell from the radio that the train was too close for us to get the bridge shot, so we made a fast U-turn and headed for Huffman.
We beat the train to Huffman by a few minutes but did not see any interesting photo angles. With the knowledge the train would be stopping here for 30 minutes, we continued east on FM 1920 and decided to check out the grade crossing to the south on County Road 613. The setup here looked good with a nice long open view in which to catch the entire train in a photo, so we parked and took up a good position amidst the growing crowd. A large thunderstorm was moving east in the same direction as the train, and we hoped the Big Boy would beat it here.
Steve Goen was already set up here before we arrived and I kept asking him to check the ditch for alligators which he declined to do! After what seemed like an eternity, just before noon the headlight of the 4014 appeared in the distance and we soon got our last action shots with black skies for a backdrop.
This was a good consolation for missing the Lake Houston bridge photo, and I turned 180 degrees for my last photo of this trip to catch the drumhead on the business car Kenefic.
Troy and I had only been back in the car for about a minute when the thunderstorm line arrived and a downpour ensued. For almost an hour as we made our way back west to I45 we could barely see the road ahead of us. At least the rain had waited until now. We made it back without incident to my house near Benbrook where Troy had left his car, ending a great trip with an old friend resulting in many good photos for both of us and my Union Pacific sponsors.
