The morning of Sunday January 16th, I headed north out of Fort Worth on a road trip to Kansas to work for a client. I used the Amtrak app to track the southbound progress of Amtrak 821 hoping to catch it at the depot in Gainesville. When it became apparent I was not going to beat the train to there, I pulled off of I35 in Sanger and set up at the West Willow Street crossing. At 11:37 am, the Heartland Flyer sped through town with just two cars between a pair pf P42’s.
Exactly three hours later I was in Moore, OKlahoma where at 2:37 pm Im used the drone to overcome a thick tree line at the south end of Flynn Yard and photograph this parked BNSF southbound autorack train with a pair of KCS units leading.
I continued racking up the miles heading towards Kansas and made my next railfan stop in Blackwell, OK where found AT&SF 2-6-2 number 1096 and an unrelated caboose still parked south of the old AT&SF depot.
The depot was casting late afternoon shadows over the now all but dormant track.
The remaining track from here north to Wellington, KS is now operated by the Blackwell Northern shortline. I had already driven by their compound at the south end of the line where a GP7 and a GP30 were unmoved since my last visit here in 2020. I followed the line north all the way to South Haven, KS where I found two more locomotives in the form of EWLX 8702, an ex-UP, ex-Cotton Belt SD40T-2 number 8375 and ex-C&O SD18 #7311.
The 8702 appears to be their road power; and while the 7311 loos like it is shoving cars up to the local elevator, it does not appear to be in service.
I pulled over on the rural road a few miles north of South Haven for this view just before sunset.
As I arrived in Wellington just after moonrise, the two rear DPU’s of an eastbound intermodal train were heading away from me up the main tracks past another pair of DPU’s including warbonnet paint BNSF 742.
Crossing over to the north side of the tracks I found two more icons of Santa Fe Heritage in the form of the old general office building and the freight house.
Now with the light fading, I headed on up I35 and the Kansas turnpike for another hour to the Holiday Inn Express in El Dorado, Kansas.
