Day 3, Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Fort Worth–Amarillo, Texas

Photos by Dave Ingles

The occasional passing of TRE commuter trains woke me up Tuesday morning, in time to get dressed etc., before our 8 a.m. departure. TRE engine 121 passed my roomette window at some unknown time, then was in charge again as we pulled out, him pushing a Dallas-bound train out of the Fort Worth depot and "through the building," surely a piece of good luck, as we departed north on the former Santa Fe. The gray beginning would bring sunshine, then a torrential rain, then afternoon sunlight.

Up toward the yard at Saginaw, everyone "was in place" in the Caritas, either on the platform or inside, timetables, route charts, and/or maps in hand. Today would be old mileage for many of us as far as Quanah, as we rode a BNSF-Amtrak excursion during the 2008 NRHS convention in Fort Worth up to Quanah and back. From Quanah to Amarillo would be new for many of us.

At Saginaw we split two coal trains, one loaded (right) and one empty, before hitting the diamond with UP's former Rock Island (and OK&T) line.

Across the post-merger connector from ATSF to FW&D and onto FW&D at CP 11 at 8:20, we broke into sunlight in due time. This is a sometimes curvy but more often a sawtooth up-and-down piece of railroad thru rolling Texas countryside, and was busy. Here's the first 'routine curve" shot of the day, at Milepost 49. One doesn't want to overdo these.

At Alvord, MP 51, we had our first meet, with 6120 East, a grain train with two units up front and two rear DPUs, at 9:15

Photography was inhibited — impossible — thru Wichita Falls, Milepost 114, at 10:40 a.m. owing to running thru a torrential rain, a front we saw for a long while ahead of us and to the west. The city has a yard and a small museum display, including an FW&D steam engine, at the former depot site downtown. It was our only substantial rain of the entire trip!

At Iowa Park, MP 124, we met an eastbound stack train with some trilevels on the rear, 8195 East, with 2 units up front and no DPU, that perfectly illustrates this line's sawtooth profile. Mid-train, visible blue sky reappeared.

After another meet, not photographed since we were having lunch, at Chillicothe, MP 178, at 12:10, with a tank-car train, we reached Quanah, MP 192, at 12:30 and made a 6-minute crew-change stop at the small metal "depot" (not photographed). On the north side was a two-unit local freight waiting for us to get out of the way. Note the standing water next to the engines. As we left town, I made sure to leave the lunch table to  photograph the old Quanah, Acme & Pacific depot and HQ building, now a municipal rental hall, if I remember from 2008 correctly.

Childress was the site of FW&D's main shops, now only a vast expanse of bare ground on the west end of town, but mid-town, by the main drag's underpass, FW&D Pacific 501 is on display under a roof. I remembered this from Rick Moser and my driving along this line south from Amarillo in 2002 for a fan trip series on Farmrail in Oklahoma north of Wichita Falls. Childress also has a Sonic Drive-In with a big dining room (it gets HOT in Texas, so eat in a.c. comfort!).

Bill Crawford of the Boston area ably served as "attendant" and "bar keep" on the upper level of the Great Dome. The computer printer at right is part of Jim Fetchero's "mobile office" for Iowa Pacific.

Hedley, Texas, MP 263, passed at 2:30, may or may not be a true "tank town," as that is an original railroad term in the steam era, but I thought the contrast of its two municipal water towers was worth a shot.

As we entered greater Amarillo after 4 p.m., I was asleep at the switch and missed dandy shots at a new mainline fuel pad east of town that  I didn't know existed, but my consolation prize was this shot of DPUs on an eastbound coal train.

We sashayed across BNSF's "Transcon" in Amarillo, at the old East Tower site, without delay or seeing any Transcon action at 4:22. Just beyond Dalhart Jct., the north switch of the FW&D south-to-Transcon West connection, I almost missed displayed Santa Fe 2-10-4 5000, which had been moved from its longtime spot by the old Santa Fe passenger station to what appears to be a kind of obscure location.

We rolled right on and tied up at the old FW&D depot, now a yard office, at MP 337.7, at 4:30. Switching nearby was a pair of units that BNSF employee (and passenger) Neal Payton clued me in as the east unit, 2381, lacking dynamic brakes, being former Toledo, Peoria & Western … so I had to shoot it, of course. A few passengers saw a minor, one-truck derailment of a tank car farther over on the yard tracks, but I missed it, and this was my final photography of the day.

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