KCS Trip - 1

Hi, I spent 8 great days with friend Dale Diacont photographing mainly the Kansas City Southern between Kansas City, MO and Rich Mountain, AR.  Dale drove from his home in Virginia to Kansas City and made a perfect pickup at the Kansas City airport.  My wait time was only about 5 minutes after landing about 20 minutes early at about 9:40 AM

We immediately headed south, and, after exiting the Kansas City metropolitan area began to follow the tracks on back roads.  We quickly picked up this northbound on the scanner and photographed it at Cleveland, MO.

We continued south to Drexel, MO where we heard a northbound and southbound would meet.  First up was this northbound merchandise.  KCS runs two types of merchandise trains each way each day between Kansas City and Shreveport, LA.  One type carries an H before its origin and destination codes.  This train picks up and drops off at yards along its route, including Pittsburg, KS, Heavener, OK, and Texarkana, AR.  Trains having symbols beginning with Q run straight through between terminals stopping just to change crews.  We never heard the symbol for this train.

Shortly after the merchandise train rolled north the coal train came south running with a single unit leading and a single unit as DPU (1 by 1).

The DPU was an SD70 MAC still painted in its as delivered Grinstein Green paint.

Next we photographed a south bound coal train with a really ugly former SP C4400AC trailing so a photo is not included.  Next, we caught north bound coal empties at Caton, MO.

After Caton we photographed a north bound empty UP coal train, however, the location was not recorded and so the photo is omitted.  The day ended at Oskaloosa, MO with a northbound empty grain train.

While the weather was beautiful all day trains were sparse as the railroad was doing a great deal of track work. We spent the night at the Extra Inn in Pittsburg, KS; a very reasonable $55 per night for 2 people 2 beds and very comfortable. They even had breakfast. Hope you enjoyed the photos.