Day 2 in Texas
I started in Flatonia at 8AM. All was quiet and there were no trains in the area. After a side trip to San Antonio to firm up travel plans back to Monterrey, I decided to head southeast and intercept the KCS/TexMex route to Laredo.
My route took down US 181 south from San Antonio. I noticed on my Texas map that there were two towns with Polish-sounding names in Wilson & Karnes counties. Since I’m of Polish ancestry and I didn’t expect to find many Poles in Texas, I thought this was worth a look-see. I traveled to Kosciusko and Cestohowa – not exactly the correct Polish spelling but close enough! I never thought I’d see a Polish flag flying with the Texas state flag, but there it was…
After that dose of rootedness I took the scenic route to Refugio, picking off counties I’d otherwise have no reason to transit. Lots of flat farm and ranchland. (Slightly) exceeding the speed limit on two lane US 77A/183. Once upon a time the train passed through Goliad, with its classic southern-style town square & courthouse. All that’s left is the remnant of an underpass beneath the now-gone bridge deck which once carried SP tracks from Victoria to Beeville.
In Refugio the railfanning began. It was easy to find the UP tracks as they were just a few blocks in from US 77, the main route from Houston to Corpus Christi. When not in a town the tracks hug the road. These tracks carry UP, BNSF and KCS, and I saw all three between here and Robstown. I was driving, again just slightly over the speed limit, so I missed capturing on film the NB BNSF grain train. The NB UP mixed freight gave me enough warning to shoot through the windshield at 70MPH. That was south of Woodsboro, in Refugio Countty.
Once I hit Robstown the KCS/TexMex tracks head west to Laredo, across yet more farm & ranchlands. I hit a KCS goldmine on this stretch of about 120 miles of track. A NB grain train
was canned on a siding just west of Robstown. Like shooting fish in a barrel, I was able to get some great shots of the train with its 2 KCS-belle painted units (1 GE, 1 EMD – unit numbers to appear at slideshow time).
Flat-as-a-pancake coastal plain is the name of the game from Robstown (home of the greatest high school name I’ve ever seen – the Robstown Cottonpickers. I have the water tower pic to prove it) to Alice, a surprisingly large town in the innards of south Texas and the county seat of Jim Wells county. Just east of Alice the FRED frequency chirped, and across the cotton field another KCS grain train sped east. This train was entirely those KCS-newly painted grain cars. Unfortunately the taggers have already sullied a few – it must be discouraging to paint railroad cars for a living.
West of San Diego (just across the county line into Duval county) the landscape transitioned from farmland to classic Texas ranchland. Classic Texas ranchland is mostly brown but some green fields, enclosed by miles of metal fencing from as simple as barbed wire to as elaborate as custom-built, big bucks fence. Occasionally you see cattle. Once in a while you get lucky and spot more exotic fauna. My best catch was the combination buffalo/ostrige ranch.
From San Diego through Benavides, Realitos, Hebbronville (a lot of states have some place named Hebron or close to it), Bruni, Oilton, and on to Laredo, it’s miles of welded rail through the ranchlands. Just west of Hebbronville the FRED chirped again and another EB passed by in the pouring rain (I experienced a couple of Texas thunderstorms, which you can imitate by painting your car windows black, standing on the roof, and pouring bucket after bucket of water onto your windshield), mixed freight pulled by a couple of grey GP60s.
I hit the city limits of Laredo about 10 miles east of downtown. For some reason Laredo has the least expensive gas prices in all of Texas. I filled up for 2.36 a gallon (up in Flatonia it was 2.99).
So that’s the end of Texas for a while. Today’s tally was 7 counties, 13 for the weekend, and 34 total. Only about 200 to go and Texas is complete!
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