Covered wagons at Valley Mills, TX in 1965
Covered wagons at Valley Mills, TX in 1965
Two GE U28CGs head south out of Fort Worth with the Texas Chief. In the background are the Fort Worth & Denver (CB&Q) and Rock Island lines.
Barely a year old, U28CGs lean into a curve with the Texas Chief
A nice pan shot of U28CG #350 at Moody, Texas
A healthy Texas Chief at the ATSF's divisonal headquarters in Temple, TX
Trusty old F-units get a freight underway out of Temple, TX. The line to the right was also an ATSF line that allowed passenger trains to bypass the freight yard.
Kansas City Southern F-units soar over the Mississippi River on their way out of Baton Rouge, LA in May of '67. You can see the antennas for the train phone system that KCS used. It was similar to the system that PRR used, but it wasn't used as widespread across their system. The A-units are also painted in the pretty short-lived "blonde" livery, with the red body, black roof, and yellow strip around the headlights and the top of the body. This was phased out in pretty short order for a solid red dip with a black roof. The B-unit is still in the original Southern Belle livery.
Another angle of the Mississippi River bridge, showing the sheer size of the bridge.
KCS power slumbers at Shreveport.
A Rock Island freight at Fort Worth with an FA-1m, an EMD B-unit and an EMD road switcher for power. The FA-1 was repowered at Lagrange with an EMD powerplant, basically making it an F-unit in Alco clothing.
The same train passing by the decrepit tower at Saginaw Texas, while an ATSF freight waits far in the backround.
That may be a St. Louis Southwestern SD45 in the lead, but this is a Rock Island freight train. Power-short Rock Island was leasing motive power from the Cotton Belt to get by.
A Texas & New Orleans transfer freight slips through Rock Island's Peach Yard behind one of the T&NO Baldwins, while Rock Island GEs head out the other direction, and Rock Island pups switch cars in the background.
Classic stainless steel-clad EMD E5s lead the Texas Zephyr out of Fort Worth. The old heavyweight passenger car cut in ahead of the baggage cars is a bit weird.
An A-B set of E5s with the Texas Zephyr. While that stainless steel skin made them look more integrated with the new Budd equipment, that effect is lost when paired up with old heavyweight equipment. There's a pair of Rock Island switchers headed into Fort Worth behind it.
I find your wealth of information fascinating. Railroad sports is one of my favorite reads.
East Broad Top #16 crossing Meadows Road in Orbisonia for the first time in 67 years on a test run with three of the new-construction coaches. The East Broad Top's original coaches were purchased secondhand, with 6 of the cars coming from the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn in 1916 and an parlor car that had been used as Grover Cleveland's personal car on the Big Level & Kinzua Railroad arriving almost a decade earlier in 1907. Those coaches were used during the common carrier era, primarily by miners to commute to the coal mines, and saw use during the tourist era but are well-worn and need a complete restoration. To minimize wear and tear on the original cars and add ridership capacity, they had these new cars built by Hamilton Manufacturing in Bellingham, Washington to resemble the original cars. Despite their vintage appearance, they are fully modern: the tongue-and-groove wooden paneling is actually a composite planking (think Trex decking), they roll on new trucks with roller bearings, and inside there are electric lighting, an audio system, a modern toilet, and a Baker heater and baseboard ducts for cold-weather operation. One of the four cars is a combine, and the combine is designed with power lifts on both sides for wheelchairs, making it American Disabilities Act compliant. The original coaches will be fixed up and resotred, but will be reserved for special events or excess capacity to minimize wear and tear. They also have a number of converted gondola/flatcars that serve as open air cars that they will continue to use.
I mentioned the new construction combine that EBT had ordered, and then a little while later, they posted on Facebook that it had just arrived
You'll need to log in to post.
