Everything's bigger in Texas

I see you are going to try the Texas group again. Texas is huge, and has tons of railroad activity. Plenty of great railfanning places, and atleast down by the gulfcoast, the weather has been great for railfanning. Warm and sunny.

Eric

Some photos from around the Houston area...
http://community.webshots.com/album/93936949TbTObc

My main Webshots page:
http://community.webshots.com/user/ericroe

I hope Trinity is still growing down there. Alot more people should use the trains rather then the cars and trucks. I wouldn't want Texas becoming the next LA where they have more cars then people and the pollution is out of control. I hope my home station of NJ esp in the Northern area becomes like LA. One LA is enough.

Hopefully Trinity will be as large or larger then Septa in PA, LIRR and Metro North in New York and NJT in New Jersey.

I live down in Houston, and we just got ourselves a light rail, went into operation on Jan 1st, 2004. Only 7.5 miles long, but it's a start, and they have already voted to increase it. Already had 24 accidents with it since they started testing in November. It's a strange and poor design in area's, but decent in others. Houston has major traffic problems and commuter rail could help it, but since the way the city is laid out, you first need a method to get people around once they are in the city, like with NYC. NYC has tons of great Commuter Rail that brings people into the city, but then the subway system takes over and gets people from GCT or NYP to where they need to go. NYC was so smart to have the foresight to build the subway, even out to basicly nowhere, and look at it today.

Houston Lefts

I grew up near Houston, but I have not yet seen the new light rail commuter. I lived in Dallas when they built DART's light rail and the heavy rail commuter trains. Although I moved out of Dallas three years ago, I have been back several times and have ridden the light rail and the heavy rail a couple of times. Both are growing and expanding quite rapidly. The light rail now runs some 20 miles north and 7-10 miles south. The Trinity Express now runs to Ft. Worth through Irving.

I now live near Texarkana (in Texas). Texarkana has the UP and the KSC that run through, as well as Amtrak. I have always been a fan of the AT&SF, so I miss my trips through Ft. Worth! But a friend of mine owns a railcar storage facility, and he owns three GP-9 ex-Conrail units, and he has an MP-15 leased out. So I have a few opportunities to see these trains up close (like from inside the cab of the MP-15).

Texas is a great state for railroads!

Jim

I was down in TEXAS back in May to visit my son and his family. He is stationed at Fort Hood and had just got back from Iraq the month before. We did some railrfanning around Temple and saw quite a few BNSF trains running through there.

We checked out the museum at the State Fair Grounds in Dallas the day we left TEXAS.