A good day chasing this passenger special with the Galveston Museum F7 units.

A loaded Houston coal train passes the original Santa Fe searchlight signals at Belleville TX, though they seem to be on borrowed time as their replacements sit ready to go.

A Santa Fe F passenger unit reduced to freight service pauses with a northbound at Bellville, Texas to swap crews just after 2:00 a.m. on July 19, 1971.

The daily grind. SOP was to get to Bellville before 9AM to get a head start on the mid-morning cloud explosion; shoot what was in the roundhouse tracks, then catch whatever was leaving on the sou... (more)

Though I don't remember the exact date, I do recall that we saw this set at Bellville in the morning, but got involved with chasing the usual grain trains, coal trains and assorted joy riding up a... (more)

Oh, how I wanted to play "Let's Make a Deal" with the outbound crew about to get on at the yard office and set out the remotes! That 8753 kodachrome as the second unit was just knawing at me and ... (more)

"Take 'em to roundhouse track 9" were the favorite words to hear when cutting off units in Bellville in the morning, as it was the fav spot for nailing the big stuff.

Typical hot and humid south Texas railfanning. Having eyed this set all afternoon amongst 3 other power sets laying over, we waited until the outbound crew of the 545 started out of the e/f, wanti... (more)

Back when the merger was in the works, some of us had our doubts and literally fell over ourselves getting the kodachromes when the light was right. In this case though, I also PHSICALLY fell ove... (more)

Ya'll laugh at me for my comments about clouds and cloud gods; this is what a normal summer's morning looks like in southeast Texas. We had to leave Houston to get to Bellville NO LATER than 9AM;... (more)

What's wrong with this picture? Southeast Texas in the summer, late afternoon; where's the clouds?! Rare not to be getting your exercise jumping up and down screaming at the sky while the kodach... (more)

Sometimes you get off cheap: all it took to get the inbound crew to pull up from behind a cut of grain hoppers and spot the power was a round of onion rings for the crew from the burger joint acro... (more)

The daily grind: 1.) start at Bellville in the morning yelling at the clouds to just move ao you could shoot last night's remote cut-outs at the old roundhouse tracks, then 2.) move on to shooting... (more)

Last batch of SF30Cs were yellow, but 9568 sports the then experimental flange lubricating system, evidenced by the tank just behind the conductor's side.