UP Engineering Department – On the Road Again
UP’s Engineering Department is on the road again, in style, of course, inspecting more of the system via passenger special. They were last through Houston this past March.
The current special departed Council Bluffs, IA on 5/17/11 for a quick, 10 day tour. This is their itinerary:
May 17: Council Bluffs-Kansas City-Des Moines
May 18: Des Moines-Mason City-Butterfield-St James-St Paul
May 19: St Paul-Duluth-Adams-Milwaukee
May 20: Milwaukee-Proviso-Villa Grove-Dupo
May 21: Dupo-North Dexter-Jonesboro-Fair Oaks-Bald Knob-Little Rock-Pine Bluff
May 22: Pine Bluff-Monroe-Alexandria-Shreveport
May 23: Shreveport-Houston-San Antonio (Kirby)
May 24: San Antonio (Kirby)-Smithville-Sealy-Rosenberg-Houston-Palestine
May 25: Palestine-Longview-Texarkana-Little Rock-Van Buren
May 26: Van Buren-Coffeyville-Kansas City-Topeka-Marysville
May 27: Marysville-Gibbon-Grand Island-Fremont-Council Bluffs
Yesterday, 5/23/2011, I was able to get a few shots of the SSHKB-23 just after noon. Mid-day light was pretty bad, but what can you really do?
I set up at West Junction, thinking that the light might be a bit better in the curve. The only problem there is that you can’t see the train until the last second, so you have to stay very alert. Not a problem, as I knew the train was getting close. Within 5 minutes, a headlight came around the curve.
False alarm! It’s UP 7628 with a westbound manifest. He’s probably going to pull up to Heacker, where double track ends, to allow the special to get by him. The only problem is that this train is on track 2, and it will block the passenger special from view. Time to find another spot. Quickly. I relocated to Heacker, CP SA-014. Within 3 minutes, another headlight comes into view.
Just like that, the special was by me. I started after it on Hwy 90. I was still about a mile behind it when it cleared the detector at MP 15.6 at 63 mph, at which point I wisely called off the chase.
The train will come back though here tomorrow morning, 5/24/11, so there’s no need to burn a lot of gas to get a few more pictures…
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
We were headed to CP SA025, the east switch of Sugar Land, late yesterday afternoon. There would be some sweet light there for two westbounds that were headed that way.
Unfortunately, the traffic gods had other plans for us. The first westbound overtook us while we were sitting in traffic. Of course, it couldn’t be just another generic UP or BNSF train.
It was a KCS train with 4 standard cab EMD’s for power. You don’t see that every day!
We caught up to it at the west switch of Sugar Land siding. The light wasn’t very good, but at least the train had stopped just short of some deep shadows.
The second westbound was upon us. It was on the main, running around the KCS train. At first glance, there was no shot due to the deep shadows. But there was a little patch of light between the shadows…
That didn’t turn out too bad. Now for the shot of the all old-school EMD consist. Check out the third unit, KCSM 3842. It’s been painted into Belle colors. It would’ve been nice on the point!
The stack train had a diverging approach signal at CP SA029, the east switch of Harlem. Note how close the west switch of Sugar Land is to the east switch of Harlem.
One last shot of the KCSM 3821. It would sit here another two hours, until 9:45 PM, due to several KCS trains having to come off of the Rosenberg sub before they could take the 3821 southward.
I didn’t get the shot I wanted, but I’ll try to be philosophical about it. A wise man once said:
You can’t always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
Murky Day Military Train
We came across a westbound BNSF military train this evening on our way home. It was just coming onto the UP’s Glidden sub at T&NO Jct. Even though there wasn’t much light, I chose to get a few shots of it for the record.
I set up for the train at the Scott Street grade crossing, near MP 7 of the Glidden sub. The overpass in the background is South Loop 610.
BNSF 7863 is westbound on UP rails in Houston, TX on April 24, 2011
It struck me as odd that there was only one locomotive on the train.
The train appeared to be mostly support equipment, no armor. A lot of the vehicles had “AR ARNG” stenciled on the front bumpers, leading me to believe that this is Arkansas Army National Guard equipment.
So there is more than one unit on the train! I was surprised to see a DPU on a fairly light train like this, but I remembered that having a DPU helps minimize slack action as well.
This train will make a right turn at Tower 17 in Rosenberg to re-enter BNSF trackage. The last BNSF military train I saw through here was headed to Fort Carson, just south of Colorado Springs, CO. That would be my guess for the destination of this train.
WP Heritage Visits Houston – Again
My previous post was about Union Pacific 1983, UP’s Western Pacific heritage unit, being in Houston this past March 18th. Fast forward 30 days to this past Monday morning.
It was just after 11:00 A.M. I was home, editing images from a recent event. For entertainment, I had the radio tuned to the Glidden sub road channel. The radio had been quiet all morning, not uncommon, because there are always MOW curfews.
Out of the blue, I hear the dispatcher call UP 1983 for an XC crossing protection at mile post 26.3. After a few moments of disbelief, I snapped that this was 3 miles from me!
I jumped out of my chair, grabbing the radio, car keys, water bottle and camera gear in record time.
Once on the road, there was more radio chatter indicating that the 1983 was a westbound. That’s a good thing because at this point light was non-existent due to the overcast skies. Hopefully as it went west, some of the low clouds would burn off.
Within 15 minutes of the initial alert, I had set up near the west switch of Sugar Land siding. A westbound KCS grain train was in the siding and there was a clear signal for the main.
When it was all said and done, I was able to catch the QEWWC 16, UP 1983 at Sugar Land, at East Bernard, coming into Eagle Lake, departing Eagle Lake after meeting an eastbound, and finally in Columbus as it came off of the Colorado River bridge. I only did video due to the tough lighting conditions. On my way back home, I caught an MEWSA at Lissie.
PS- 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.
The light was less than ideal, and it was windy as heck, but what can you really do? All in all, it was a fun chase. I would have liked to chase it further west, as I did with the UP 1989 chase last September, but the wife had a doctor appointment that afternoon.
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…
Each year, Union Pacific Engineering Department executives travel throughout the UP system in a special passenger train to review the status of the physical plant.
This year’s version, powered by Rio Grande Heritage SD70ACe 1989, has been has been traveling across the system for the last several weeks. Symboled SBLBT (Special Bloomington, TX to Beaumont, TX), it passed through Houston this past Tuesday, March 2, 2011.
I decided to only shoot video of this train because its northward route would have the train severely backlit.
I caught it at Pearland at 10:22 A.M. Knowing there was no way I could keep up with it along Mykawa Drive, I got on Beltway 8 / Hwy 288 to get ahead of the train.
There was just one problem. There are two routes, the East Belt sub and the West Belt sub, that the train could take through Houston toward Beaumont. I didn’t know which one the train would take through Houston.
I was hoping that the radio would provide some clues, but the dispatcher never talked about the special. It ended up being a coin toss.
I guessed it would go via the East Belt because it was the most direct routing to the Beaumont Sub. I set up at the Lyons Ave. grade crossing just North of Basin Yard.
Within 5 minutes of setting up, my guess was vindicated when the train came around the corner, passing me at 10:58 AM. It went into Settegast for a crew change and to pick up / drop off passengers.
My last shot of the special was at Dyersdale, several miles North of Settegast Yard. The train blew by me here at 11:41 AM.
I took the long way home, managing to get a few freight trains on video as well.
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.
KCS After Dark
We were on our way to do some grocery shopping Friday night around 8:00 when I heard UP’s Glidden sub dispatcher tell KCS 4117 that he’d go in at Sugar Land to meet three west.
I’d been waiting for a chance to try some KCS night shots. Hearing that a KCS freight would be at the east end of Sugar Land for at least 30 minutes seemed like a great opportunity.
After telling my wife that we could get groceries anytime, but night photo-ops of KCS trains are few and far between, we diverted to “Prison Road” crossing near MP 26 of UP’s Glidden sub to see what might be had.
We arrived to see the 4117 and two other units holding a manifest just west of the grade crossing. As soon as I had rigged up the tripod, one of the westbounds arrived just in time to help illuminate the scene.
Extra SP 6818 West at Redlands, CA
I haven’t posted anything SP-related recently. My bad. I don’t have an excuse. I won’t let it happen again.
To demonstrate my sincere desire to make things right with SP fans (myself included):
A westbound SP manifest negotiates the reverse curves at Redlands, CA on Jan. 24, 1988
This shot was taken near the beginning of time when leased locomotives became commonplace on the Southern Pacific due to SP’s ongoing motive power shortages.
The two trailing motors are P&L 3047 and NHL 6686, an ex-MP SD40 and ex-SLSF/BN SD45, respectively.
PS – This photo was taken the same day as a shot of ATSF 5808, which I posted on Feb. 11, 2010.
10 Minutes – 2 Trains
After spending the better part of the day doing chores at home, it was time to get out into a beautiful Saturday afternoon in South Texas. I ended up driving toward Rosenberg. I thought that between the UP and BNSF, I might have something in good light at Tower 17.
About halfway to Rosenberg, I heard the Glidden sub dispatcher give a track warrant to KCSM 4658, authorizing it between MP 2.5 to CP SA036 on the Rosenberg sub.
An eastbound. That’s nice, but I’d much rather a westbound.
Ask and ye shall receive, because a few moments later the DS said that he’d bring the KCSM into the terminal after he ran one west by him at 17.
By the time I got to Tower 17, the KCSM 4658 was already there. Within several minutes, the detector at MP 34.5 announced that the westbound was getting close.
The first 3 shots show UP 6558 crossing the BNSF at CP SA036 and going over the switch where the Rosenberg sub diverges from the Glidden sub mainline.
Pivoting to face west, I was able to get the 6558 heading west while the KCSM 4658 waits for its turn to go.
After visiting a few moments with the KCS crew, their signal flipped to green, allowing them to enter the Glidden sub eastward.
Westbound Windmill Train
Lots of traffic today along my stretch of UP’s Glidden sub, but a backlog of work precluded me from getting out during the day. It was so bad that the 0900 relief crew that got on KCS 4015 West at Missouri City around 1:30 this afternoon was still sitting there at 6:00 P.M.
That was when the DS told the crew that they would be able to go once the “wide-load special” got by him shortly.
That remark certainly got my interest piqued. Since we were already heading out to dinner, I grabbed the camera to see what luck I might have.
It was getting dark quickly, but I figured I’d be OK. I made it to the Dulles Ave. grade crossing just as the detector at MP 15.6 went off.
“U.P. detector milepost 15.6, no defects, train speed 4-2 mph, axle count 1-4-0, temperature 4-3 degrees, detector out”
That’s kind of fast when the shutter speed my camera selected at ISO 800 was 1/20 second. Time to make some adjustments or else the train will just be a blur.
The best I could do was 1/80 second at f4.0 with the ISO set to 6400. The typical shutter speed I use for action shots around here is 1/800 second, so this is going to be interesting.
The head end of UP 8581 passed me at 6:19 P.M., a mere 29 minutes after sunset.
From a distance, it looked like a pipe train. As it got closer, I thought to myself “Boeing 737 fuselages?” Then I remembered I was in Houston, so that was impossible.
As the cars passed by at a good clip, I couldn’t really pay much attention to the cargo as I was having to concentrate on keep the shots in focus.
As the train went off into the sunset, I was thinking it was a train of sections of wind turbine towers that I had just seen go by. But I wasn’t positive because I’d never seen a train like this before
We got back home around 9:15 P.M. Googling “Vestas” informed me that Vestas is a Danish company, and it’s a world leader in wind turbines for the generation of electricity.
A quick trace advised me that the train was already out of Flatonia at 9:01 PM, with an ETA into Yermo, CA at 9:58 A.M. on Monday, the 24th.
I suspect that these components came in through the Port of Houston, so the symbol on this train might be something like SHOYR, but don’t hold me to that.
Amtrak After Dark
With the Amtrak schedule change a few years back, Amtrak’s Sunset Limited is strictly a nocturnal operation through the Houston area.
We decided that we wanted to get a few pictures, and some video, of Amtrak #1 departing Houston. We packed up the extra stuff needed f or night work, as well as some cold weather gear, and headed to the depot last night.
Upon arrival at the depot, we saw that the train had already arrived. Resisting the urge to get right to it, we first checked in with Amtrak’s station agent to make sure it would be OK to take some pictures. He acceded to our demand for access was fine with us taking the pictures, so we headed to the end of the platform.
After a few adjustments to the camera and flash, we came up with a shot we were happy with.
Amtrak #1, the Sunset Limited, just before departing the Houston depot on Jan. 12, 2011
With the still pictures in the bag, we hustled back to the car to get the video equipment. We got everything ready at 9:47 PM, a whole three minutes before departure.
Once the train had left, we wanted to try our luck pacing the train between West Junction and Stafford. But that would require getting on the freeway quickly in order to have a shot at getting to West Junction ahead of the train.
Right off the bat, we were delayed in leaving the depot parking lot because I couldn’t find my glasses. After a frantic 90 seconds of searching for them, I found them in my pocket.
Then it seemingly took forever to get on the freeway due to wrong turns. But we eventually found ourselves on I-10, westbound to I-610, where we would go south.
We just knew that there was no way we could beat the train to West Junction, but we were satisfied with what we had already captured. We actually joked that, if anything, we’d see the gates come down in front of us just to torment us.
I’ll end the written narrative here, allowing the video to tell the “rest of the story”.
PS-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.
Christmas Eve in Fort Worth
This past Christmas Eve in Fort Worth was cold and blustery with rain pretty much all day. Residents of Fort Worth weren’t complaining though, as it marked the end of 40 straight days without rain. Kind of like a reverse Noah’s Ark thing, but I digress.
With the weather being so ugly, we had no interest in railfanning. But when the rain tapered off around 8:00 PM, Andy and I decided to drive around to check out some of the railroad facilities in town.
We knew that pretty much everything would be shut down, but I grabbed the 5D Mark II in case an opportunity came up to play around with its high ISO capabilities.
The first order of business was to find Fort Worth & Western’s Hodge Yard, just north of downtown. Even though we missed the exit off of I-35W, but were able to double back and locate it without much trouble.
Their empty parking lot suggested that they were already shut down for Christmas, but I was able to get a few shots of their locomotive servicing facilities before we left.
(All below images were hand-held with the 24-105 L IS 4.0 lens on the 5D Mark II set to 6400 ISO. Exposure was anywhere from 1/15 sec – 1/50 sec, all at f 4.0.)
I hadn’t noticed it when we were there, but is that a photocopier in the lower right corner of the above image?
We wanted to see the Saginaw interlocking, so we headed off in that direction. As we were northbound on Business 287, we came across BNSF’s Saginaw Yard. Everything was shut down here as well, but this empty grain train was at the north end.
We made it to Saginaw interlocking. This is where BNSF’s (ex Santa Fe) line to Oklahoma City, BNSF’s (ex-BN) line to Amarillo and UP’s (ex-Rock Island) Choctaw sub line to Oklahoma cross over each other.
Nothing was running here either. We did pause to admire the panoply of red signals, seemingly everywhere, that protect this interlocking.
We wanted to head south back toward downtown on I-35W, but mistakenly ended up northbound. We exited as soon as we could, but somehow missed the turn to get back on the freeway.
In the process of making a U-turn back to the freeway, I saw what appeared to be a BNSF logo in the distance. So we U-turned again, to investigate the logo. Amid all the navigational drama, somehow or another we ended up at another BNSF facility.
We didn’t see any trains or tracks anywhere, so we figured that the sign was a mistake or something…
We managed to get on Main Street, southbound toward downtown. Once we got into downtown, our next goal was to check out Fort Worth ITC (Intermodal Transportation Center).
Of course, nothing was going on there. But we did see this good-looking sign on building just south of the ITC.
In 2007, the UT Arlington/Fort Worth Center renovated and relocated to the historic Santa Fe freight depot in downtown Fort Worth.
What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know that historic buildings are old? It makes more sense to just tear them down. At least that’s what we do in Houston… </sarcasm>
We had one main goal left on our night tour of Fort Worth’s railroad attractions.
Locomotive servicing facilities at the southeast corner of Davidson Yard
Overpass at the west end of Davidson Yard
A hump job shoves east from the west end of Davidson Yard
An eastbound intermodal at the West end of Davidson Yard
DPU from the above intermodal shoves past us at the west end of Davidson Yard
Head end of the above train passing through the east end of Davidson Yard
Might this be UP's commemorative locomotive honoring good eyesight and/or optometrists?
We jumped on I-30 headed to our home away from home. At the last-minute, we decided to do a quick drive-by of the Tower 55 area.
From the Hattie Street overpass, we saw a switch job with a couple of gen-sets in the distance and an empty coal train head north on the UP through the interlocking.
We also saw the tail end of loaded coal train to the south of us on the Ney Bypass. We headed south, looking for the head end. After a few minutes, we found ourselves of the bottom of Ney Yard.
Awaiting a new crew, the 6682 whiles away the last few hours before Christmas Day 2010
At this point, it was way past late-thirty. We called it an evening and headed home to await midnight, at which point we could open our Christmas presents.
All in all, I was quite happy with the images. I knew the 5D II was good in low light, but it never dawned on me that I could use it hand-held to railfan with after dark. There’s a bit of noise in the skies, but I bet a pass through Light Room 3’s noise reduction could fix it easily.
Sounds like I might need to do some after-dark railfanning when I get back to the Houston area…
Southwest Rails 