WP Heritage Visits Houston

I photographed a wedding this past March 18th in Northeast Houston. As the ceremony was relatively early, there would be a two-hour wait for the reception venue to open.

Since I wasn’t too far from Union Pacific’s Englewood and Settegast Yards, I decided to swing by to see what was up.  As it was fairly cloudy, I didn’t plan on taking any pictures unless something unusual was there.

As I passed over the Lockwood Street overpass, I immediately spotted something interesting at the west end of Englewood. The WP heritage unit, UP SD70ACe 1983, was switching a short cut of cars just off of Liberty Road.

Cloudy day or not, this is the only heritage unit I had never been able to photograph. I have only seen it once,  buried in the engine facility at Roseville, CA in 2006.

UP 1983 at the west end of Englewood Yard on March 18, 2011

UP SD70Ace 1983 adjacent to SD70M 3823 at Englewood yard on March 18, 2011

Detail view of the front of UP SD70ACe 1983

Detail view of the rear of UP SD70ACe 1983

What happened to the brand-new, shiny heritage engines? 5 years of hard work with infrequent baths, that’s what.

There wasn’t much else worth photographing in the cruddy conditions, so I headed east along the Lafayette sub to see if I could catch something on video.

I only had to travel a few miles before I saw a headlight in the distance. I set up at the crossovers at the east end of Fauna for UP4670, a westbound manifest with two SD70M’s for power.

Turning back toward Houston, I went toward Settegast Yard. I saw a headlight coming toward me at Settegast Jct. The lead motor looked different, but there wasn’t enough time to properly set up the video camera.

I almost blew it off, but at the last second I decided to go hand-held with the camcorder  and was rewarded with UP 9771, a C&NW patch, on the point of a rock train made up of Herzog hoppers.

PS- As always, once the video starts playing, click where it says “360p” near the right, bottom corner of the player. It will switch to 480p, greatly improving the quality of the video.

By this point, it was time to head toward the wedding reception. Oh well, back to work…