BNSF subs. in Texas

[Anonymous]

i myself have railfaned parts of the BNSF SUbs in Texas.
If you ever railfan Texas Subdivisions the key is to pick your location.
unlike you Tehachepe loop and Cajon Pass you have towns and rural areas.
i have experinced the difficulties before.
anther problem is property and tresspassing
alot of areas around the track are privet live owned
but my point is is anyone having as much trouble as i am trying to rail fan and photograph trains in privetly own areas and bad photo spots[xx(]
wat happened to the good days[B)]

[Anonymous]

Well the only think of,have you tried driving off road on county roads? that's what I do.If you would like to photograph on private proprety just ask the owner In sure that thay will let you. the most important thing to remember is....don't be afraid just ask.and don't worry about it.Like people tell me it's much better to ask then to just do it on your own.[:)].
Also happy railfanning to ya.BNSFfan.

[Anonymous]

Brian--

I'm surprised you are having so many problems finding public access. As I'm sure you know, Texas is still largely rural, and many of the really inaccessible rail properties are in urban areas. Much of the mainline mileage in Texas roughly parallels passable public roads, many of which were the original highways built next to the RR because that's where the Highway Dept could get cheap ROW. In most other cases, there are lots of secondary roads crossing the tracks. Now, that's not completely true on BNSF around Lampasas, where your info says you are from, but there are still some good spots for watching, like from US 183 south of Lometa for several miles, and that's not too far from you at all. Same is true up around Goldthwaite, on the north side of town. Or go the other direction on US 190-the tracks are generally parallel to a road all the way through Killeen-Copperas Cove, etc. The BNSF main Temple-FTW runs right alongside TX317 above Belton almost all the way. Lots of public places where you can stop and watch a train.

TxDOT produces detailed county road maps that are available at low cost and which can probably be of help to you. Also look for a sectional chart, available from your friendly fixed base operator (FBO) at the local airport, or if you know a provate pilot, talk them out of their old copies when they replace them. The FBO will usually sell you one even if you are not a pilot, and they have RRs and adjacent roads on them because they are landmarks for air navigation at low altitudes.

Have fun and be careful.

[Anonymous]

bryan, a little off topic here, but i live on the former santa fe dublin sub in comanche not too far from you. as you know, this is now the fort worth and western but bnsf has trackage rights and have been using them for a few months now. it started as a few container trains running west to brownwood, then eastbounds to fort worth, now westbound box car and general freight running during the night, one a day only. when this all started, an eastbound stack train was hit by a car about a mile from my house. ( yes, the car ran into the train, no one hurt). an employee of ours lives by that crossing and talked to someone who was investigating and he said to expect more trains through here, and he also said bnsf may buy the line back. i doubt that will happen, im just curious if you have heard anything about this. with the line from san angelo reopening, and possible kcs trains running through here, who knows whats going on! i just saw you are from lampassas, so i thought i would ask...