29 October 2006 – On Rich Mountain

[Jimbaux has learned that denial isn’t the way to forgiveness.]

So Here We Are . . . Back Where It Began

Sunday 29 October 2006 was our last full day on Rich Mountain that year, and we made it a good one, as you will see here.  These posts have already brought back some happy memories from one of my travel companions who was there.

Pre-Dawn M-Train

Tradition dictates that we start the morning at the Downtown Cafe in Heavener a couple of blocks from the south end of the KCS yard.  Apparently, we got the below shot before breakfast.

Yeah, there’s not much to see there.  It’s M-SHKC arriving before dawn.  Oh, well.

Daybreak

These don’t really qualify as shots, as they don’t have much artistic merit.

I’m showing it merely for the content, the fact that there’s one intermodal car on the rear of a train.

That’s typical for the KCS, especially in these parts (not on the Meridian Speedway), and it would not be the only time we’d see something like that today.

Go North, Then South

As usual, the South Howe Hill is as far north as we go, and our daybreak trip there would be the only time we went there on this day.  Here’s the H-train (the H-SHKC), which had already been in the yard when the M-SHKC arrived.

I’m not even sure that this shot is doable anymore.

Anyway, what’s this?  Who’s spying on me?   Somebody tell me what this is in the dirt!

Anyway, below is my shot of the M-train, which you saw before daybreak in the first picture.

I think that that’s one of my favorite shots of the day.  It’s contrasty and crisp.

Next comes an empty Welsh coal train on its way back to Union Pacific rails and ultimately to a mine in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

All of the coal that moves here comes from Wyoming.

Now it’s time to depart the South Howe Hill and go back south.

A Power Set At Heavener

Let’s check out this power set at the fuel racks at Heavener.

Hey, look, Gateway Western!

Now, it’s time to head south, up the mountain.

I Don’t Remember The Context Of Taking This Picture

But I can tell you that we are 342 railroad miles from Kansas City.

Oh, well.

Blue Cut

It isn’t a day on Rich Mountain without chasing a slow-moving loaded coal train up the mountain.  Here’s the C-KCTU2 at Blue Cut.

The “TU” in the station code stands for Texas Utilities, the customer of this coal at a plant somewhere in northeastern Texas.

The C-KCTU comes from the BNSF and therefore almost always has BNSF locomotives on it in addition to the KCS locomotives, which also go to Wyoming.

Let’s get out of here.

I love the highway there as well as the fall foliage.  It’s a good place to get away from everything, even trains when there aren’t any running.

I don’t recall if the two highway shots above were taken in Oklahoma or in Arkansas, but they were taken very near in whichever one of those two that they were not taken.

Arkansas . . . .

We’re a couple of miles into Arkansas here, a place called Howard.

I remember when the Shadow Warrior and I photographed a loaded coal train in the snow here in February 2003, my first visit to the mountain.

There was a little family watching the train too.

And here’s a wider view, showing the subject of their viewing.

I think that we must have  zoomed past Rich Mountain, maybe to grab a refreshment at the Rich Mountain Country Store.  Maybe not.

Don’t you love that foliage?  Even if it’s not all bright and yellowish?

In all my times at Rich Mountain, I rarely did that shot.

Acorn and Shawn

We stopped at Acorn to get the shot there, and Shawn was photographing the hotbox detector; so, monkey-see-monkey-do, I did the same!

These pictures of Shawn were not in this essay when it was first published.

I suspect that the reason for it is, quite simply, that we had had a falling out, but he has since died, and I wrote how he had a big impact on my life.

Below, the train is about to cross US Highway 59 at a community called Acorn.

After five years, I don’t remember what we did next (which is probably a good thing), but 50 minutes later, we were back at Rich Mountain (indicating that we may have turned around at Acorn.)

I got this shot of a broken coupler in a puddle next to the track.

Ah, yes, railroading.

You?  NOT AGAIN????

Turning the camera up toward the track itself, we see the daily northbound H-train coming, but look who’s leading!  Recognize that thing from the day before?

Shreveport must have turned the 4609 around quickly.  Interesting.  I hope you didn’t get too sick of seeing it yesterday.

Photographic evidence (again, my memory from five years ago has faded) indicates that the crew of this train, forced to stop at Rich Mountain anyway, stopped for a bite to eat at the Rich Mountain Country Store.  The train was apparently parked to my right when I took the below picture.

I mean, after I took the above picture (and remember that in a photo essay such as this one, they are presented in the order in which they were taken), I turned back around to broadside-roster a locomotive that I had gotten sick of seeing.

I like gondola cars.

Okay, here we are too at the Rich Mountain Country Store.  See the highway and the track in the background?

We walked across the highway to shoot the M-KCSH that was apparently meeting the H-SHKC here.  Here’s the M-KCSH, with some lease Geep in tow.

Do you like wide-angle view with the flower?

Hey, what’s that little locomotive in tow?

Now why would you do this to a tractor trailer?  This is messing with my obsessive compulsiveness!

Anyway, we walked back across the highway to the store parking lot and really took a break to eat this time, as per photographic evidence in the form of a couple of my pals eating with their food containers on the hood of my truck.  That was after I grabbed this better shot of the sign.

Uhm, I don’t know, dudes.  I mean, I kind of have an inner libertarian, but if there were smoke inside that place, I don’t think I’d be visiting it nearly as much.  Oh, and does what’s written there mean that Arkansas doesn’t have a state legislature?  Really?  I didn’t know that such a thing existed in this country!

The Southbound H-Train

Photographic evidence indicates that we went back north down the mountain and intercepted the next H-KCSH train.  We shot it at Zoe, but that shot wasn’t worth showing (well, per edit of 2016, it apparently is worth showing.  Here it is.)

The one below at Page is (worth showing, as my original essay implied.  I mean, it is better than the above image, right?)

And, hey, look!  It is at Page where he meets his northbound counterpart, which you just saw earlier at Rich Mountain.

Well, isn’t that nice?  Fortunately, that shot of the H-SHKC is the very last shot that you’ll see of the KCS 4609 in this series.

We wisely decided to chase the H-KCSH further south, a decision that seems even more intelligent now that those crappy-but-lovable yellow ex-UP lease pieces of junk were leading the train, seen below back at Rich Mountain, back again in the parking lot of the store.

We chased this thing all the way to Dubya (where, you might remember, we shot the M-KCSH the day before with the KCS 4609 in the lead.  Then again, we shot that train at plenty places!)

This is another one of my favorite shots of the day.  In fact, I had such trouble deciding which of the two of the shot immediately above and the shot immediately below that I liked better, that I put both of them here!

The one immediately above is presented in the all-important square format.

Turn Around

Apparently, that was as far as we went that day, and, apparently, the H-train was to meet a northbound empty coal train at Potter.  So, we made our way back to Heavener, with three of us stopping at Eagleton and waiting a good while for the empty coal train to show up.  This shot was taken 49 minutes after the previous one, after the three of us got in some good, quality banter.

Yeah, it’s overexposed; oh, well.  I guess that’s a tough shot to do, though I’ve seen others (whose names I can’t recall now) do it well.

Anyway, we got a better-lit, better-exposed shot – even if not a better composed shot – of this train at Howard.

We crossed back into Oklahoma, and to Page, where a short M-KCDA (Kansas City to Dallas) would go into the siding for the empty coal train coming down the mountain.

Nero’s Engine!!!!!

Ah, look at what we have here!  We have a short train – that one, yes, one well car with the containers stacked two-high is the last car on the train – with the KCS 666 leading!  The Beast!  I think that thing has since been scrapped or sold, meaning that this may be my only shot of it.

Like I said, those trains with one intermodal car on the rear do happen here!

Here’s the coal train again, after the M-KCDA passed it.

Yeah, it’s not so great.  Oh, well.  Maybe the next shot – the last action shot – will be redeeming.

The Grand Finale?

Here we are back at the bridge at Hodgen, and we can’t even see much of the train in this picture.

Oh, well.  It’s just a picture.

Fun Times

Back at the yard in Heavener, the sun was setting.  There wasn’t much happening.  I got this one last shot, a self-portrait of three friends spending a weekend on the mountain chasing trains that they love so much.

Ah, yes, fun times.  We are just happy to have had them and to have this photographic record by which to remember them.  Remember that if you like what you see here, the best way to be alerted to site updates is to join the Facebook fan page.

I hope that this colossal set of pictures (of which about five are really good) was enough for you for one post!  Remember that, as I’ve been suddenly reminded this week, like the events and memories shown in these pictures from five years ago, everything in life,  is temporary, including life itself.

Merci,

Jimbaux