Big Sandy Jct. Crow UP MINEOLA SUB Hawkins
UP/AMTK (TP)
BIG SANDY
Pritchett
ABOVE: Just west of Big Sandy UP 7625 West passes deciduous trees retaining full autumn color in early December 2011. East Texas is heavily wooded, and the area around Big Sandy can present spectacular fall colors.
UP PINE BLUFF SUB UP MINEOLA SUB Wilkins Big Sandy DALLAS TEXAS UP CORSICANA SUB Winona Owentown 0 2 4 MILES
Illustration by Otto M. Vondrak. Not all stations shown. Not an official map. ©2013 Carstens Publications, Inc.
axis. If this will be your first visit to the area, it would be wise to become famil- iar with the lay of the land and routes of the rails using one of the many map sites on the Internet beforehand. That way, you can hit the ground running. The Pine Bluff dispatcher is UP Dis- patcher 18, transmitting on AAR chan- nel 96 (161.550). For the Corsicana Sub it’s Dispatcher 20 on AAR channel 14
(160.320). For the Mineola Sub be- tween SP Junction in Dallas and Big Sandy it’s Dispatcher 27 on AAR chan- nel 69 (161.145), and from Big Sandy to Longview, Texas, it’s Dispatcher 29 on AAR channel 90 (161.460).
Railfanning in East Texas
The east Texas landscape is general- ly rolling with lots of hogbacks on the
6 8 10
railroad, and the countryside is heavily wooded. This is certainly true of the area surrounding Big Sandy, and it can be difficult to tell if a train is approach- ing on either of the two lines through town. A reliable indicator of a train ap- proaching on the Pine Bluff Sub is the arrival of a crew van from Longview at UP’s trackside office (Longview is 23 miles east of Big Sandy). With a crew waiting at the office, a train can’t be too far off. When a train arrives, the real fun be-
gins — the guessing game of which line it will take out of town. Sometimes the dispatcher will call the train over the airwaves and reveal its route. More of- ten the only indications are the way the switch is lined just west of the crew of- fice and the aspect of the signal on the Corsicana Sub. If the signal is anything but red, the train is headed west on that route; otherwise, it’s going to take the Mineola Sub toward Dallas. Often
43
UP/AMTK (TP)
Sabine River
CP R113 CP R114
UP (SSW) UP (SSW)
Gladewater CP R105
CP R103
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