by John Adams
24 attendees joined together in Fort Worth, Texas for the 2025 FOBNR convention.
Our first activities were operating sessions on model railroads in the Fort Worth area—two HO scale layouts and one N scale layout. I was able to attend Ole Melhouse’s N scale BN layout and had a great time running through freights, a local freight and a yard job. Working as engineer/conductor teams the operations went smoothly and all enjoyed their visit.
We then returned to the Holiday Inn to register and pick up our convention packets. After meeting old friends and new attendees we headed for Sickie’s Garage for a great dinner and then returned to the hotel for our evening program. Doug Andreason was our presenter and explained the history of the BN predecessors arriving in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This occurred first with the Fort Worth & Denver building south from Decatur, Texas to the Tower 60 area of Dallas. They used existing trackage to get to Fort Worth. With the Frisco merger another route arrived from the Tulsa area and the ATSF brought their line from Oklahoma City with the BNSF merger. Doug explained that the FW&D line boomed with coal traffic from the Powder River Basin, peaking at up to 24 trains/day. This is now down to 12 per day but somewhat increases during the summer peak season. Intermodal and grain trains are also heavy on this line. In the DFW area trains are also seen from the UP, DGNO, FWWR, TRE, and Amtrak. The Saginaw area is quite busy with BNSF and UP trains. Also in this area is Trinity Industries that manufactures tank cars, coal cars and covered hoppers. There are also asphalt plants and a salad oil production facility in this area. A great railfan spot for many of us was the Chamber of Commerce parking lot in Saginaw.
We met again on Thursday morning to carpool the short distance from the hotel to BNSF’s headquarters. After taking our annual group picture we split up to get tours of the BNSF art collection and their archives. Their art collection is extensive and includes much of the art commissioned by the NP, GN and ATSF. This was often done to encourage tourism at areas such as Yellowstone on the NP, Glacier on the GN and the Grand Canyon on ATSF. This artwork was often then reproduced as promotional materials such as calendars, with over 300,000 calendars made some years. A number of prolific artists were used, including Mary Coulter, one of the early female artists. Many of the paintings were done from photos, but also personal visits by some of the artists.
On the archives tour we learned that they have a large collection of the original plat maps which actually are the documents proving ownership of land by the railroad as well as photos documenting rail businesses. Of interest was also a scrapbook of the 1937 Super Chief, an atlas of the city of Chicago and permits that the railroad had to get to haul alcohol during Prohibition. They also had some larger objects, such as a 1/3 size train model as well as items from the St. Paul Winter Carnival. They also had employee magazines from the predecessor roads as well as other publications. Interestingly, the archivist mentioned they do not have a large collection of timetables and would welcome any of our duplicates.
We then all gathered and went to the viewing area over the Network Operating Center (NOC). Here we were given box lunches by BNSF and viewed a movie explaining the NOC. Michael Cook and Chad Sundem were our hosts and explained that the NOC was originally set-up in 1995 and remodeled in 2017. It covers about 40,000 sq. ft. and controls the railroad’s 5,000 locomotives, 200,000 freight cars and over 40,000 employees. The area in the front of the center, under 18 100’ screens showing different views of the railroad and information, is set up with 98 desks with dispatchers assigned to areas across the system, from the Chicago area on the left to the Pacific coast on the right. In the middle of this semi-circle are the supervisors, positioned to be able to respond to any problem areas. In the rear of the room are the different Business Unit Desks of the railroad, the MOW supervisors and other support personnel. The Power Desk assigns locomotives to the over 500 train starts daily. They related that the NOC used over 900 tons of steel in its construction and is totally self-sufficient with its own water and power supplies. They said that over 650 people may be working in the NOC at any one time and that there are a few distant dispatching centers for certain areas and to interact with UP dispatchers in some area.
After our tour of the headquarters, we got on a bus to visit the Alliance Intermodal Hub, with Tony, the Hub Manager as our guide. He explained that the Hub Center was created in 1994 and has grown from 200 to over 500 acres since then. There are currently 350 employees in the center, 125 per shift, but only four are BNSF employees. PRS is the managing partner for the yard as well as eight other partners.
They are presently making up to 960,000 lifts per year, ranking in the top three hubs system wide. Extensive automation is used, including an entrance building with 28 cameras to check each incoming trailer or container, and drones to track inventory in the facility. They have eight large cranes and have parking spaces for 8.500 units on nine ramp tracks as well as two storage tracks. They can make up 8,000’ long trains and typically depart 12 trains per day and bring in a like number. He said they still can increase their capacity. Their switching is done by ITSX locomotives, many of which are SD40-2’s with a couple of tunnel motors also visible.
Each loading crane has an operator and a ground man, and from our bus we were able to watch one of the ground men climbing over the cars to install the inter-box connectors between the containers. It was hot that day, and they are required to take frequent breaks to cool off and hydrate.
After thanking Tony for our tour, we bused over to the Operations Support Building near the yard. This is now used for new dispatcher training, but was used extensively during the NOC remodeling and was used during the pandemic to provide for social distancing for the dispatchers. It can be a backup location if something goes wrong at the NOC.
Back at the hotel after dinner, Michael Spoor gave us an excellent presentation documenting the Joint Texas Division between 1970 and 1996. This line from Fort Worth to Galveston had been joint territory of the FW&D and the Rock Island. For a number of years, the FW&D (eventually BN) and RI alternated dispatching and doing MOW for five years each. The challenge was the RI’s financial situation, which usually meant that during their five years the railroad deteriorated badly, and FW&D/BN had to use their time to get caught up on maintenance of way projects. Michael had photos of just about every major site on the line, including the engine facility at Teague on the midpoint of the line and the major yards and businesses. He noted that the Frisco merger brought increased traffic to the line as did grain deliveries and coal after the BNSF merger. Unfortunately, the coal traffic essentially ended in 2018 and some of the previous yards are now used as storage-in-transit yards for plastic pellet cars.
On Friday morning we headed off for Wichita Falls to railfan over the ex-FW&D line. We caught several intermodals as well as a local switching an elevator on the north end of Wichita Falls. We then visited Jim Kocher’s home and saw his business of producing pewter HO scale detail parts. He also showed us his home layout, a beautiful HO reproduction of Abo Canyon in New Mexico. He explained that he had actually walked the entire canyon a number of years ago to take multiple photos he used to make his backdrops, but also has reproduced the track plan, even including grades identical to the prototype. His modeling of a modern railroad was quite impressive.
After returning to the hotel, we then met for our annual membership meeting. Most attendees were present and heard reports about the process of transferring our archival materials to the Pacific Northwest Rail Archives. We also reported that we are using Scale Trains free slide scanning service in return for the use of the images for their research purposes. President Ben Hucker also explained the process of finding a replacement for The BN Expediter’s editor as Dave Poplawski retires from this position after decades of service. Without any volunteers stepping up we may need to contract for services who do this work. As is our annual process we did solicit ideas for the 2026 convention with a number of suggestions for places on the railroad that are becoming less used, including the Powder River Basin (PRB), the Seattle area, and the previous MRL territory. Someone volunteered to help organize a PRB convention, so this idea was discussed at the Board meeting that followed. For the minutes of that meeting, contact the FOBNR secretary.
On Saturday morning many of us met at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas. Our tour guide led us around their extensive outdoor train exhibit with several locomotives from the pre-BN and BNSF era. They also had an extensive G scale layout indoors.
We then had Saturday afternoon free to wander the area before we met for the convention banquet. After our banquet we were treated to comments from retired BNSF employee Bill Brown. Bill related that he continued his family’s history of railroad employment and began his own long railroad career after obtaining degrees in finance. He initially went to work for the Rock Island, parlaying his previous knowledge of railroading and his financial education into work to figure how the Rock could continue to operate with their horrific financial situation. As the Rock continued to deteriorate, he realized his time with them was coming to an end and was then fortunate to get hired by the BN.
He began his BN career as a Car Foreman at Aurora, and Cicero, Illinois, and then St. Paul, Minnesota, but soon transitioning to Diesel Foreman at Northtown. He then moved to Willmar, Minnesota as the Area Mechanical Supervisor and then moved again to Assistant Manager Mechanical Budgets in St. Paul. His last move was to Director, Mechanical Budgets in Overland Park, Kansas, then General Superintendent MOW Shops and General Superintendent WFE and MOW shops, working to consolidate all the management positions in Overland Park before he left to work for the Chicago Central Railroad. Bill eventually returned to BN, but we ran out of time so we will hear about it later.
We ended the convention with the annual auction, which this year included some BNSF circle-cross decals, some framed posters and a number of other items which brought $441 into the FOBNR coffers. After that we adjourned with plans to meet again next summer.