Acción de TFM – 5 July 2004

[Jimbaux is craving everything that he thought was alive.]

Determined, after an emotional weekend of telling my roommate goodbye and giving a railroad slide show to local railroad enthusiasts and of introspection partially prompted by passing an American holiday outside of the country, to get some railroad action pictures in the limited time that I had remaining in Mexico and to redeem myself for not theretofore having much success in this realm, I went north of Monterrey after class on Monday 05 July 2004 and got some more action pictures on the Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana.

We start off rather insipidly with TFM 1329 doing some switching on the “belt line” near Conexión Norte in General Escobedo at around 18:00.

‘Twas neat to see a TFM SD40-2 in action switching the steel place where I would see and photograph a high-nosed two-tone-blue GP switching in December 2006.

Next, I went north to the intermodal facility at Salinas-Victoria where I saw this.

I cannot read the writing on that boxcar.

Moving back south toward Conexión Norte, I found a northbound train waiting in a siding, or, presumably, what was at the time the end of double-track, perhaps at Leal.

Remember that this area is all double-track now, as shown toward the end of the article from my 31 December 2006 visit there.

At 19:05, the train emerged from the siding.

Those TFM AC4400CWs were sweet!  The lead locomotive was TFM 2621, and the second locomotive was KCS 2042.  The train was long and was mostly auto-racks and had a big block of shiny boxcars with build dates of June 2004.  The conductor gave a friendly wave to this norteamericano standing atop his truck with a camera.

The clouds were helping me by both staying out of my way – not being between the sun and the train – and by making an interesting presence in the sky behind the train.

Finally, we see a going-away shot.

Check out the little “road” next to the track; it will play a key role in a bizarre incident that I would have three days later.

Stay tuned!

Oh, and four years to the day after I took these pictures “south of the border,” I was within a few miles of the Canadian border getting some pictures in Minnesota and North Dakota; I was then in North Dakota participating in the seminar for which I had applied in 2004 but did not get a position, leading me to pursue going to school in Mexico, which made possible the pictures that you see in this an upcoming articles from Mexico.

Jimbaux