May 31, 2015
BNSF Fort Scott Sub
Springfield – Kansas City, Mo.

by Dave Ingles

In direct contrast to Saturday’s action-filled 286-mile, 10-hour ramble up the Thayer Sub(s), this day’s trek was less scenic, shorter (200 miles), took only 6 hours, saw us encounter only 11 trains (6 of them near or in Kansas City, i.e., from Olathe, Kans., on north), and was made in misty, then gray, weather. The saving grace for most of us was that we added 156 “new” ex-Frisco miles to our logs.

Before we left our overnight “business-car track” site in Springfield Yard, I snapped this shot looking north toward the old shop area of an ex-Frisco switcher, 77, at 7:45 a.m. I have no idea if it’s “displayed” or possibly just “saved,” but from its appearance it is obviously out of service. We began moving at 8:17, and the next few photos look back from Caritas thru the mist at adjacent units and trains we passed before gaining the main line and then almost immediately swinging north at the Nichols junction onto the Fort Scott Sub for K.C. at 8:29.

My next photos were almost an hour and a half, and 60 miles later, at Lamar at 9:52, first looking back across the Missouri & Northern Arkansas diamond and then at the little metal “station” or “office” on BNSF. High Iron covered M&NA’s ex-MoPac line from Pleasant Hill to Branson, Mo., and on down into Arkansas in October 1993, following the AAPRCO convention in Sacramento, Calif., and its special train east via former Western Pacific, Rio Grande (over Tennessee Pass and thru the Royal Gorge), and Santa Fe to K.C. This day we had seen no trains between Nichols junction and Lamar, but a good photo op was missed at South Greenfield, of the diverging 2-mile spur north into Greenfield proper, where a green BN caboose was parked just north of the derail. Obviously a local freight serves this branch by coupling to the caboose to shove north.

Adding to the intrigue of that 2-mile spur into Greenfield proper, a TRAINS Magazine map of the steepest grade and highest-altitude point on 65 "classic era" railroads says the Greenfield spur, at 3.6 %, was the steepest climb on the entire former Frisco!

Twenty miles further northwest, we were held at the KCS Pittsburg Sub (main line) diamond 10:24-10:27 for the signal to clear, clattering across the lonely diamond and immediately taking siding at Arcadia for our first meet, with southbound coal loads behind 6219/9124 with 6206/8928/9772 as DPU. We cleared North Arcadia at 10:36. The Missouri-Kansas state line passes thru the siding.

Fourteen miles north, we curved around at Edward, the junction with the 88-mile Afton Sub, which comes up from that Oklahoma town on the Cherokee Sub (BNSF’s Springfield–Tulsa main line) to this point, just south of Fort Scott. Most current mileage collectors need the Afton Sub, which was freight-only already by 1960. Four miles north of Edward, we paused at the Fort Scott yard office 11:20-11:23 for either a crew or pilot change or just to entrain or detrain a railroader(s); I took no photos here. As we passed the end of two main tracks at North Fort Scott at 11:27, we overtook the standing 5071 north, which now minus 1 BNSF unit, we’d seen about 24 hours before.

My next photo, after lunch and 53 miles further north at 12:35 p.m., looks back south at the diamond at Paola with UP’s former MoPac line to Colorado. Two miles further north, at Hillsdale, UP’s former Katy main line gets onto our ex-Frisco route, trackage rights that goes back decades. I believe Paola is where my “new Frisco mileage” for the day ended, as in 1960 I’d ridden MP’s “Colorado Eagle” round trip between Denver and K.C., and consensus (we’d welcome being corrected) was that this train was still using MP’s passenger-train-only rights on Frisco between Paola and K.C. to avoid having to turn the train in K.C. and backtracking to the city’s east side (Sheffield, or KCT Tower 14 area then) to access the Colorado line. Paola is also where, today, the local bank is that manages the new rail preservation trust of our late mileage-collector friend John Emery of Chicago, whose family had roots here (see www.emeryrailheritagetrust.com). The bank officer who presides over the trust, having been alerted by IPH employee Jim Fetchero, on board and one of the trust’s 3 advisors, came out to “wave us by” at a road crossing north of the diamond. Between Fort Scott and Paola, incidentally, we had passed, but I could not photograph, two trains: at Pleasanton at 11:54, BNSF 4851 South, a merchandiser with two trailing NS units; and at Henson at 12:26, a ballast work extra with two BNSF units, tied up for the weekend.

Waiting for us on Hillsdale siding at 12:45 was a northbound UP train that come off the former Katy, as seen from Caritas’s rearmost “fireman’s side” chair, thru the back window and past rear-platform riders.

Now proceeding slowly, following a northbound freight, we passed BNSF 4484 South at Bonita, MP 26, at 1:18; and a BNSF bare-table train plus BNSF 8172 South at Olathe, MP 20.5, at 1:25. In due time, at the imaginatively named (probably new) siding “Bravo,” MP 5.6 (at 1:31 we’d crossed from the left track to the right at “Charlie,” MP 16.5) we overtook BNSF 5151 North (trailing units 978/5203), then near the Missouri state line in Kansas City about 2 p.m., we passed a UP coal train, whose DPU I photographed near the site of the old Katy Glen Oak Yard. We then stopped and waited from 2:03 to 2:08, I believe for our line-up off the BNSF onto KCT to go into the K.C. Amtrak station.

Our 3-day saga was coming to an end. As we curved around toward the depot, at the former KCT roundhouse area, BNSF 6569 East, a “Transcon” train on the new flyover, paced us as it moved to “ground level.” We pulled into the private car tracks west of Union Station at 2:17 to conclude the portion of the “BNSF Circle Trip” that I would ride.

We were scheduled to depart at 5 p.m. on a chartered bus out to Baldwin City, Kans., to ride the Kansas Belle Dinner Train, giving us a “layover” of almost 3 hours. I took a few photos at Union Station of passing trains, and on our dinner train trip, which are presented in a separate file (http://condrenrails.com/JDI/BNSF%20Circle%20Trip/Kansas-Belle.html).

 

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