Busy day at Valley Junction

[roryglasgow]

As my wife, son and I were returning home from a trip to Cedar Park/Austin, TX, we saw a freight train carrying gondolas full of gravel heading east on the Austin subdivision of the UPRR. It was heading for Valley Junction, which is just a few miles west of Hearne, TX along U.S. Highway 79.

 

[roryglasgow]

This train was waiting on a siding for the gravel train to pass:

 

[roryglasgow]

Valley Junction is a grade crossing between two parts of the UPRR Austin Subdivision. There's not much out there except cotton and corn fields, a pecan orchard and a silo. But today seemed to be a pretty busy day for the railroad.

After eating lunch in nearby Rockdale, we saw our gravel train waiting near the junction (west side). I took a side road so we could get a closer look:

 

[roryglasgow]

A bridge crosses over the track just south of the crossing. This train of empty hoppers (coal?) was waiting, too.

On the north end was a very long train of mixed freight cars on a siding. Two engines were sitting nearby (not connected to any cars). My wife took a picture of the two engines, but they were on the far side of a cotton field, so the picture didn't show much of anything interesting.

 

[roryglasgow]

Here is a shot of the crossing (on the other side of the bridge from the picture above). Yes, I stopped the car in the middle of the highway. No one was coming!

We met the train that everyone else was waiting for, heading west, when we got into Hearne. We didn't have the camera ready in time, though.