In the arms of Mother BNSF

I lived on the Atlantic Coast for a quarter century before I admitted that eastern railroads really are railroads and actually deserving of some affectionating. Today my wife says the CSX North End Subdivision in southern Virginia is “Fred’s second home” and suspects me of supporting a second family there.  Still, after all these years, there’s something about a western railroad that quickens my pulse.

Two-thirds of the way across Missouri yesterday, I steer my Dodge off Interstate 70 and head north on 40 miles of state highway to the little town of Carrollton. One reason is to pay homage to the little house on West Benton Street, where my father was born 102 years ago.  The other attraction of Carrollton is that it’s the first place I can intersect BNSF Railway’s Transcon and begin to inhale the fast pace of big time railroading in the west.

I am not let down by Mother BNSF, either. No sooner do I point the car west beside the tracks than four big GE motors swoop past with an eastbound Z train — a bunch of 53-foot double stack containers followed by an endless line of UPS and LTL truck trailers.

I make my way west, across the flood plain of the Missouri River, through Norborne and Hardin, where a tie and surfacing gang has an endless line of equipment on the north track. The dispatcher in Kansas City is herding first eastbound, then westbound trains around the gang on the south track. Passing Henrietta and Camden I see parked eastbound trains waiting their turn through the gauntlet. Even on a Monday, this is a busy railroad.

Damn, it’s good to be back and see this railroad.—Fred W. Frailey