At about 7pm Friday we arrived in McAlester, Oklahoma. Primary objective: Seek out any and every A-OK locomotive in the area... none. The whole town was void of any locomotives which was a real let down this early into the trip. We did get a few shots of the "depot"[s] in the area though.
With nothing else to see or do in town, we headed to a nearby Long John Silvers / A&W for some frosty mugs and fish...
The next day we loaded up and headed for Ft. Smith / Van Buren to foam the A&M Excursion train. On the way we made a pit stop in Wilburton to catch the majority of A-OK power... what an interesting shortline. By the way- Super-Sevens are awesome.
Van Buren - Surprise! Alco!
We ended up chasing him all the way to Winslow. After the 46 decoupled from his train I was completely lost... at the time we only knew of this much as far as a schedule:
-Springdale
-Van Buren
-Winslow
-Springdale again
wrong.
So we ended up dashing North up to about Brentwood before we thought everything through and dashed back to Winslow. Gone. To the freeway!!! Well after a run past the mountains we ended up in Rudy, thinking "man what a great shot this is going to be". We somehow managed to miss the train and ended up waiting at the crossing for a good 20 minutes until 1:30 when we left to go to Van Buren in case we missed it. Yep. That would be the end of my journeys along the A&M for this trip at least...
Back to Wilburton!
Just East of Wilburton there's a town called Panola with a sand (?) unloading "facility" and a real cool Rock Island bridge...
I could swear all 70 miles of this railroad is original Rock Island ballast, ties, etc. (aside from the seldom welded rail, although I'm not sure that isn't Rock Island itself)
I can't type anymore. I'll add to this tomorrow if time allows.
