TBX 3401 :: TrainBoard Lease Car!!

Retro railfan report- cue Rod Serling.............

As promised, I have a report.
Before I start, I must apologize for getting shots so late- I've been busy working on our new place, and between redoing floors, plumbing work, amd yardwork that rivals a cleanup after a tornado ( displaced two toads, a jackrabbit, and a turtle, plus I know where all the poison oak plants are ), I was given the weekend off by the missus as a little R&R. So, without a moment's hesitation, I headed south along US69 to Durant, OK, where I hoped to shoot a little UP and Kiamichi RR action. FUnny thing is, I ran into a crazy fog bank between McAlester and Atoka, and by the time I got to Durant, I coulda swore I saw MKT and Frisco trains. Probably shouldn't have stopped at Krebs to take that tour of the Choc Brewery.............:tb-wink:
ANywho, I didn't see any Katy, but I did see a lot of Frisco. Chased it along the A&A Sub all the way through Hugo, OK (Where my wife is from) to the litle Arkansas town of Little River, somewhere between Ashdown (where did all those white SD40s come from on KCS???) and Hope (What the- blue MP power? Man, I musta gotten heatstroke the last week or two).

Oh well, I'm not one to complain, since I never did shoot enough Frisco while it was in existence before, so what the heck.............now, where did I put those Kodachrome slides?:tb-wacky:

 

Railfanning in the Twilight Zone

OK, where was I.......oh yes, the TBX gon. I headed east from Durant on US70 to Hugo, which was a town of some importance on the Frisco as well as a junction of the A&A Sub and Ft. Smith-Paris lines. I got into town too late to catch the car arriving behind train 738, but I later found out it was leaving the next morning on the "Soup Train" south to Paris, Texas with a load of crushed limestone (apparently it was loaded at a quarry north of Hugo yesterday, as was a Frisco gon).

I climbed up on an abandoned building next to the switch to catch the SOup Train heading south:



Got this from a water tower:



Apparently the backhoe on the flat was gonna be used to empty the gons. The rock was being used in the joint Santa Fe-Frisco yard in PAris. UNfortunately, I couldn't chase the train, because as soon as I came down the water tower, I was met by a member of the local police forse, who wanted to know just who the heck I was, was I one of those commernists, did I know I was trespassing, etc. I had to do some tall talking to convince him I was a loyal American, voted for Carter (a lie), was an OU fan (a very big lie that this OSU grad almost gagged on), and I was doing a story for a city magazine ( just happened to have a copy of Time in my truck). He bought it, but warned me against climbing water towers, and sent me on my way.

I decided to head over to the Busy Bee and have one of their delicious hamburgers (the place really does exist, BTW), and met a cute young lady who was a student at Southeastern over in Durant. Turned out her name was Lomax, and her daddy was in construction. Very friendly girl.....wish I hadn't lost her phone number. (NOTE: Little did I realize this young lady would cross my path 13 years later, and become my wife and mother of my two sons, but that's another story......)

Next morning, I headed down to the Frisco yard to look for TBX 3401, but was told by one of the switchmen that the car had come back from Paris empty, and was borrowed by a local circus for a special load. Come to find out that Carson & Barnes Circus is based in Hugo, and still tours the US in a tent. They use live animals, including elephants, apes and wild cats, and as you know, they , er, make a lot of deposits. Apparently some enterprising soul over in Arkansas wanted the waste products from the elephants to use in his melon fields, but he needed more than a single truck could haul. Due to the obviously sensitive nature of this movement, the car was moved east of town to a spur near the circus, loaded with its odiferous cargo, and hurriedly sent on its way on a special local to Ashdown. I hopped in my truck and sped over to Arkansas, my progress slowed by pulpwood trucks, ticket-happy cops, and little old ladies headed to market. Finally I arrived in the small hamlet of Little River, a town between Ashdown and Hope, and the site of a MoPac interchange.

A whistle west of town from the vicinity of the Highway 251 overpass told me the local was coming through the thick forest. I set up just south of the FYC Feed Mill, and was rewarded by a rare sight:


A VO1000, still in the black & yellow, still unrebuilt- they hide things well down thisaway! But why is the caboose so close to the diesel? And what the heck is that Gawdawful smell?!?!?

 

Overwhelmed by a combination of curiousity and a stench that had to have come from the bowels of Hell, I kept shooting this unusual train:



Same flat I saw yesterday in Hugo, no tractor......OK, no surprise there.......

Then an empty pulpwood flat- no surprise, as there was a pulpwood yard in Little River.......but then, there it was:



NOW I know why the caboose was next to the locomotive, no way in heck the rear-end crew was gonna ride behind THIS! An entire carload of elephant poo!

Funny thing........I didn't see a single fly near the stuff, and the train was only going
10 MPH. Good thing the wind was out of the south.........

After cutting off the train, the engine and caboose ran around the cars, switched out the gon, and shoved the mess into the pulpwood yard spur. Strange, I didn't see any people either.........



I had to stop shooting, as my eyes were watering too badly to get decent shots, and I was beginning to smell pachyderm poop everywhere. All I can say is, that (stuff) had better work!

More on the next day's gut-wrenching activities later......I had to find some place I could hose off the smell, having completely lost my appetite. Sure was glad I wasn't gonna be shoveling this (solid waste)! THAT would be an ideal "Dirty Job" for that Mike Rowe guy.........

 

Oh yeah, now I see it.....at the time, I was so overcome by the odor I couldn't remember, but I wondered why I heard a thunkathunkathunk as those wheels hit the ties. The track down this way was kinda rough, since it WAS a branch line. Some of the main was so bad I wasn't sure if they tamped the ballast or mowed it.

 

Seeing as how your home state is so strict on toxic waste, it may never see the inside of California again...........

Here's another shot of the offensive lading ready to be unloaded at the Little River Pulpwood yard:



It was so awful even the AHTD boys quite working on the resurfacing of SH251. And that MP local? No, the train hoglawed, so the crew deadheaded back to Texarkana before the Frisco arrived in town. They should be back tomorrow, so I was told.....this is how 3401 is leaving, via MP to Texarkana, then onward to its next port of call. Hopefully some time in a train going faster than 10 MPH will help air things out a bit.

 

The next day, after spending the night in a roadside park (no motel would take me because of the lingering aroma of Dumbo droppings), I returned to Little River in time to see the MP local, with TBX3401, headed out of town back to Texarkana:



This branch has a maximum speed of 10 MPH and wanders thru the trees for quite a ways, and with the locomotive running long-hood-forward with the 3401 next to the engine, the trip is gonna be pure-dee nasty for the head-end crew. Once it arrives in Texarkana, the car will leave town either toward St. Louis or Dallas/Ft. Worth in a time freight. As for me, it was time to head back home......if I could ever GET back home.

But once again, rolling north on US71 in western Arkansas, I hit another fog bank, and when I detoured over to US59 to follow the KCS thru Heavener, I saw gray & red and RetroBelle diesels again.

Why do I hear Rod Serline saying "Submitted for your approval"............?:tb-wacky:

 

Bob, great storyline, and , er, uhm, load... Thanks for sharing!

Am I still in the queue somewhere? I figure I'd be at the back of the line, being in Europe and all...

 

Thanks!

The backstory to this is: Hugo, OK is winter headquarters to three circuses, and one of the residents of the town has a large, well-kept flower garden. He uses elephan manure to make his garden beautiful, if momentarily smelly. My in-laws lived a block north of this garden, and when the wind blew out of the south during fertilizing time-:tb-shocked::tb-shocked::tb-shocked: