Night conductor. Sunset Limited. Alpine, Texas. December 2021.
Connie Marie at Alpine, Texas. February 2023.
On a cold night in February 2023, Amtrak sleeping car attendant Paul Altman stretches his legs and casts a shadow during the station stop of the eastbound Sunset Limited at Alpine, Texas.
The eastbound Sunset Limited arrives at Alpine, Texas on a chilly night in December 2022.
With a beautiful Tuscan Red FRA car tucked neatly behind the power, a near on-time Sunset Limited is minutes away from its station stop in Alpine, Texas as it speeds west in front of the Del Norte Mountains at 9:56 am on the morning of February 7th, 2023.
Tamron 15-30 at 15mm. f8, 1/640, auto ISO at 140.
The eastbound Sunset Limited changes crews at Alpine, TX. 8:50pm, February 2nd, 2023.
Rain at Springer.
No.4, the eastbound Southwest Chief slips away from the semaphores at milepost 706 and heads into the maw of a summertime thunderstorm at Springer, New Mexico in August 2021.
Home for the Holidays.
Passengers stretch their legs and enjoy a smoke during the eastbound Sunset Limited's station stop and crew change in Alpine, Texas. December 2021.
According to the milepost at the east end of Strobel Siding in far West Texas, we're 600 miles from Houston along the former Southern Pacific Sunset Route. With the rugged Glass Mountains in the background, an on-time Sunset Limited speeds west down the main toward its next station stop of Alpine, 7 miles distant. 10:15 am, December 9th, 2021.
The westbound Sunset Limited charges across the high limestone plateau of southwest Texas near Dryden early on the morning of December 7th, 2021.
Amtrak Train No.3, the westbound Southwest Chief, splits the searchlight signals at Starkville, Colorado on the morning of October 10th, 2022. Just ahead are the steep grades of Raton Pass.
The end is nigh.
Men in hard hats and orange vests rode hard into Chapelle.
With them they brought their radios and yellow painted backhoes and ripped out the rabbit brush with a vengeance, piling it up to dry out in the high New Mexico air. They gouged out the embankment and laid conduit and electrical cables and left them coiled in the sun like dormant serpents, hibernating until masts can be erected and voltage connected and new Vader hoods affixed to shade red and green and yellow lighting.
The semaphores are old, and their reliability has become suspect and intermittent, the resulting delays becoming less tolerated by the ticket bearers and by the operating departments.
They are indeed on life support, and all the endearment in the world cannot save them. Out of frame, the replacements lay prone, silent, waiting to be hoisted upon a base, bolted down, and juice applied to circuitry.
And then, a hangman’s noose will be tightened around a masthead that has been in place for over a century, bolts will be loosed, wires cut, and quite unceremoniously an era will be laid in the trackside ditch to await disposition.
The mourners have come, and the mourners have gone. Perhaps some will arrive to scavenge of the corpse before the junkman performs the last rights and condemns it to an inglorious end amongst some scrap heap somewhere, a mass grave left to the elements and rust.
But for now, our sentinel at milepost 789.2 is still faithful in its duties of protecting the west end of Chapelle siding. As the lead P42 passed, the raised blade slowly lowered, and by the time the luxury dome obs "Warren R. Henry" rolled by on the tail end of eastbound No.4, it fully displayed its most restrictive aspect---
Just as advertised a long, long time ago; long before the "Henry" wore Union Pacific’s Armor Yellow and Harbor mist Gray, and long before jet trails crisscrossed the autumn skies above The Land of Enchantment.
While there is a lot to be said for longevity, progress is constant and cares not for sentiment.
It is often a brutal affair indeed.
It has been for me, since I began this railroad photographic journey in the early days of 2017, to become acquainted with and to have the good fortune of befriending many in the field who are possessed of not only fantastic talent and knowledge in the subject at hand, but also a cordiality and a willingness to share their time and experiences with those who perhaps are just beginning to find their way down along the ballast and the cinders, all while fiddling with exposure and shutter speed and ISO.
The names of those that I have had the pleasure to meet are many, a list of which is beyond the scope of this brief missive.
Suffice to say that each has provided, among other things, immense inspiration and a true hospitable sense of camaraderie.
I am humbled to know each of you.
So here, as a gorgeous Autumn afternoon hoovers over the very edge of the Rocky Mountains, Blair Kooistra and I stand nearly shoulder-to-shoulder in the shade of a spreading mountain juniper as Amtrak No.3 speeds through the semaphores at the west end of Chapelle, New Mexico. In the azure is a tiny speck maintaining altitude above a signal crew working diligently to bring about an end to the 100+ year reign of the bladed signals; Blair’s drone records all in fantastic fashion, a record of ‘progress’ for the ages, a creep of lineside technology that the purists and lovers of all things ‘railroad’ would certainly rather do without. Somewhere on those signals, perhaps entombed deep within the strata of untold layers of shiny silver paint, is soot laid down by a thundering 2900-class 4-8-4 as it pounded towards Chicago with heavyweight Pullmans of ‘The Chief’ stretched out on the drawbar.
Current management seems oblivious to such sentiments.
Tradition and lore and romance are at their mercy, and the world is less rich for it.
Pity.
But, for now, the wires are still taut between glass insulators.
For how long?
Who knows.
Perhaps someday they will fall as well.
Pity again.
