UP 844 – Bloomington to Houston Video

The Valley Eagle just south of Bay City, TX on April 17, 2010. Click image to view the video.

I finally broke down and edited the video from our chase of the April 17, 2010 run of UP 844. This was the Bloomington to Houston leg of the 844’s return from its visit to Harlingen, Texas.

We were able to catch it at 15 different locations, plus a bit of 55mph pacing footage (sorry about the wind noise!) between Angleton and Liverpool.

In a very classy move, the train made an un-scheduled stop in the small town of Sweeny. The dispatcher received a call from a UP employee that lived in Sweeny.  He called to see if the train could stop in Sweeny because some of his fellow residents were hoping to see the “steam train”.

The dispatcher radioed the engineer of the 844 to ask if they had time to stop their train in Sweeny. The engineer relayed the question to the conductor, who replied that yes, they could stop the train in Sweeny.

Even though it was hard work that was very fast-paced, we had a great time chasing the 844.

PS – I’m hosting the video on a different server. It’s a very large file (122 mb) so it might take a moment to start playing. Please let me know if you have any problem watching the video.