Only two days passed and on the afternoon of Monday September 28, 2026, I was trackside again, but this time less than 30 minutes from home in Crowley just south of Fort Worth on the BNSF Fort Worth Sub. I had intel that another BNSF funeral train was coming south with three working locomotives pulling and pushing nineteen EMD SD70MAC’s from the deadline in Donkey Creek, Wyoming to Cleburne. The units would then be taken in small batches to the steel mill in Midlothian on the Venus sub where they will be unceremoniously scrapped to be remade into structural steel.
I left home a little after 2:00 pm when the funeral train was stopped north of Tower 55 along with a unit ethanol train going to Houston and a manifest train going to Temple. Amtrak 21 was in the Fort Worth Station but running late, so the unit train got to head south first and passed me at 2:30 pm with one locomotive and one buffer car up front.
A seemingly endless stream of tank cars followed along.
On the rear was another buffer car and two DPU’s pushing hard.
Only sixteen minutes later the funeral train arrived with two working locomotives up front leading what appeared to be and endless stream of SD70MAC’s.
Next came the nineteen units rolling off their last miles to the scrapper.
One more working unit was shoving on the rear end.
I heard on the radio that the merchandise train was heading my way next and would be taking the siding at Joshua so that Amtrak 21 could go around it. When it passed me in Crowley at 3:52 pm, it had some interesting power in the form of two GP38-2’s and one ex-BN SD60M mixed into the head end consist.
Amtrak 21 pulled by Siemens Charger number 311 came by leisurely at 4:00 pm on a yellow signal at the south end of Crowley.
Satisfied with my catches for the afternoon I made the short drive back home for dinner. While on the way I listened to the train radio as the crew put the scrap units away in the Cleburne Yard and then coupled up their three working units to go back to Alliance Yard in Haslet.
