Houston area - occasional pictures

[pH]

Here are a (very) few pictures taken on a visit to the Houston area earlier this month. I was disappointed in how few trains I saw. While the trip was primarily to visit family, I spent a few hours on three separate days beside UP and BNSF mainlines and saw a total of 5 trains.

 

Anyway …

 

Union Pacific RP20GE #Y2657 at north end of Spring yard April 11. This was being used for training staff on the use of ‘beltpack’ remote controls. There were 5 people in the cab when I took the picture – they all moved round to the front of the loco before it started back into the yard.

 

 

Northbound grain empties through Magnolia on April 11.  Union Pacific AC4400CW #6669 leading AC4400CW #6180 and SD70ACe #8817 on about 120 cars.

 

 

Two days later, I went to the railroad museum in Rosenberg. We had a long tour with two volunteers, which was excellent. There is a viewing platform in the museum grounds, and BNSF, UP and KCS trains pass by. In the three hours we were there, we saw two trains. The museum has access to dispatchers’ panels and they apparently showed coordinated track maintenance was happening almost all the way west to San Antonio, so that explained the shortage of UP trains. There was no explanation as to why there was only one BNSF train and no KCS ones.

 

The one UP train we saw had ES44AC #7823 leading SD70Ms #4597 and #4842.

 

 

BNSF coal empties passed with SD70ACes #9004 and #8798 leading. (SD70ACe #9167 and ES44AC #6280 were pushing.)

 

 

In a final attempt to see something, next day I got my brother-in-law to drive me to Navasota where a UP mainline divides into two routes, and a BNSF line crosses. I talked to an employee of a feed store between the two lines. He claimed that, in one work day, he has counted over 50 trains passing. Not today - two hours – one train.

 

SD70Ms #3917, #4029 and #4876 head a southbound manifest. Notice the earlier style of radiator on #4029.

 

 

A picture of the layout at Navasota. The UP line enters in the bottom right of the picture and splits into diverging routes left and right of the small cabin. The BNSF route enters halfway up the right of the picture, crosses one UP route, then runs between the UP routes. It parallels the left-hand UP route for several miles south.

 

[pH]

We are just back from a few days visiting family in and around Houston. I only went looking for trains on one day, going back to the Rosenberg Railroad Museum. When I visited there at this time last year, I saw only two trains in three hours. In about the same time on this visit, I saw nearly a dozen.

 

There are BNSF and Union Pacific east-west mainlines here, with a Kansas City Southern line coming in from the south.

 

Here are some pictures of trains on the BNSF line:

 

Grain empties with ES44C4 #8378 leading:

 

 

Loaded autoracks with C44-9W #4198 leading. The second unit, C44-9W #4745, had pretty serious fire/heat damage on the long hood:

 

 

Coal empties passing in a downpour. SD70ACe #9346 nearer the camera:

 

 

Dash 9-44CW #773 still in a “warbonnet” colourscheme:

 

 

I only took pictures of a single UP train - a military special headed by AC4400CW #6377, AC4400CW #6289 and ES44AC #7670.

 

 

It had a rather unusual arrangement of cars, with groups of cars carrying single-stack containers alternating with groups of cars carrying vehicles.

 

 

 

 

I got pictures of two KCS trains, one southbound lead by ES44AC #4683 and SD70ACe #4163:

 

 

and a northbound headed by SD70MAC #3902 and SD70ACe #4012:

 

 

(Apparently there were another couple of KCS trains went through while we were in the diner across from the museum having lunch.)

 

And the ‘catch of the day’ – a Ferromex ES44AC #4663 as the only power on a very long train of empty autoracks:

 

[pH]

A major exhibit at Rosenberg Railroad Museum is Tower 17. It controlled the BNSF and UP lines passing through Rosenberg and was one of the last manually-operated signal towers in Texas when it was taken out of service in 2004 and moved on to the museum grounds. It was an electro-mechanical tower. The interlocking was mechanical, and the control of the signals was electrical. They have one of the old semaphore signals on the museum grounds, which they can control from the tower for demonstration purposes. Passing train crews know to ignore it.

 

Here is the frame:

 

 

This is the best I could do to show the internals of the frame, due to reflections on the glass. The levers are out of picture to the right.

 

 

This was the route diagram used when the tower was in service:

 

 

And what looks like a ‘cheat sheet’ of levers to be used to set certain routes. It appears to correspond to lettering on the route diagram above. The yellow stickies are, of course, a modern addition. The ‘SP’ routes are now UP. The ‘GCSF’ routes were the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, a subsidiary of the ATSF, now part of BNSF.

 

 

There are other reminders of previous names for the railroads passing through Rosenberg, like the initials on this box (though there does seem to have been some change of mind about its use).

 

 

This is, apparently, a semi-official piece of equipment used while the tower was in service.

 

 

The guide told us its story, though he admitted that it had been passed down to him, and he wasn’t sure how true it was. The tower was quite a way away from the main streets of the town, and the nearest building was a disreputable bar. A female employee working graveyard shift had shot a would-be intruder from this bar through the tower’s locked door. Apparently, this was completely justified, since he was trespassing on railroad property, had been told that, and had been warned several times to leave the property. However, SP was worried about its reputation and didn’t want any more shootings, so supplied this nightstick as protection.   

 

Also in the tower is this panel, capable of showing activity on several railroad subdivisions around Rosenberg. It’s linked into BNSF and UP systems. I believe it’s the same display the railroad dispatchers see, though with no update capability (of course!). Rosenberg is on the bottom left of the display shown.