24-03-14 PHOTOS: Carrollton

For the better part of a decade I have been enjoying the privilege of a yearly trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area for arts event with friends and during that time I have been checking off parts of the DART/TRE/TexRail system that serves the region. By 2024 I had traveled all of the routes except one, the Green Line to Carrollton, TX and, by extension, the A-Train extension to Denton. Anyway, it seemed like an easy enough task to ride from downtown to Denton and back in a morning, but things didn't quite work out that way. You can find all the photos from this adventure here ( mirror ).

We begin at the Love Field station with LRV #130 heading outbound on an Orange routing. 

Arriving downtown after dark I encountered McKinney Ave Trolley car #754 at Olive and San Jacinto. The McKinney Ave Transportation Authority is a heritage streetcar operation that connects DART with the McKinney Ave arts district.

The next day I tried to get up early to get out to Carrollton, and by extension Denton, before the arrival of the Texas Eagle. The first Green Line LRV that showed up, #216, was heading in the opposite direction to Buckner and although Carrollton-bound LRV #145 showed up ad wrapped windows I had no choice but to take it due to the 15 minute headways and my own time constraints.

Because of the window wraps I didn't get any outbound photos. Also, I forgot to mention that the Green Line doesn't make an A-Train connection at Carrollton, but the penultimate station, Trinity Mills. This creates another hole I'll need to fill in the DART network. Here we see the wrapped LRV #145 at Trinity Mills just before LRV #101 arrives from Carrollton.

Opened in 2011 , the Denton A-Train makes a cross-platform connection at Trinity Mills. The 21 mile line operates with 11 Stadler GTW 2/6 DMU's. Here GTW 2/6 #107 lays over at Trinity Mills.

Unfortunately with needing to meet a surprisingly on-time Texas Eagle and getting out of bed later than anticipated I did not have enough time to make the run to Denton as a round trip would take about 90 minutes including a prolonged layover at Denton. The deciding factor was ultimately bulkhead cabs providing minimal forward view and turning the ride into little more than a time sink.

Back in the 70's and 80's the powers that be in the Dallas area implemented a very forward looking policy of purchasing defunct or lightly used rail corridors for future transit conversion. Many of these were used by DART's light rail system, but others like A-Train and the new Silver Line are being used for FRA regulated services in conjunction with the local Denver, Garland and Northern short line freight operator. As such the Denton A-Train makes use of railroad type signals and signaling. Here we see #107 departing Trinity Mills just as the DART LRV train with #216 and the wrapped #145 return from Carrollton. #107 continues on past the DART Carrollton station, taking an Approach Diverging indication on the Milepost 107 intermediate signal there.

With a single track terminal, A-Train DMU's pass each other just north of Carrollton and GTA 2/6 #102 was soon on the scene to begin its own layover at Trinity Mills. I assume the long layovers are needed for padding and crew rest, but there seems to be an awful lot of downtime built into the trips.

Heading back downtown I made a Green to Red line transfer at West End between LRV's #131 and #126.

A TRE train was at Union Station with F59PH #121 and Bomber cab car #1007.

While at Dallas Union Station I managed to catch 5 of 6 the railroads that move through the facility including Amtrak's Texas Eagle, Union Pacific, TRE, DART and the DNGO. The only railroad not at the party was BNSF on trackage rights. First up was an eastbound Union Pacific autorack and manifest train that rolled through while a DG&NO transfer move waited on the TRE connecting track. UP power consisted of SD70ACe #8730 and ES44AC #8058.

Next TRE #121 departed for Fort Worth while the arriving Amtrak Train 21 caught the tail end of the UP freight.

Southbound Texas Eagle Train #21 arrived with Amtrak P42DC #56. A local railfan was on hand for the occasion.

As Train 21 carried out its station work, the DGNO movement followed the Union Pacific freight with RP20BD genset #148 leading and GP38-2's #3592 and #2088 behind.

I even managed to capture this menagerie in a single uncut video along with Train 21's departure in a different clip.





With the TRE track now empty, F59PH #123 and cab car #1009 showed up to fill the vacuum.

With my Texas Eagle commitment fulfilled and more time left in the day, I snagged a DART blue line train and rode to the underground Cityplace station to connect with the M-Line streetcar. Cityplace might be the future of DART operations in the Dallas CBD as plans are afoot to replace the current at grade transitway with a new tunnel.

At Cityplace I discovered that the M-Line turntable had broken down since 2023 and the space constrained heritage operation had parked PCC #4614 on it. As a result the MATA was only running double end streetcars like car #186 here, down the Cityplace spur.

Although it wasn't raining like in 2023, it was still pretty gray out. My goal was to visit the M-Line carbarn on Bowen St.

With Dallas metro construction on a tear, the M-Line had managed to score additional storage space in an adjacent mix-use building.

Walking back to the McKinney Ave layover pocket, I caught a ride back downtown on Melbourne car #369.

This would generally mark the end of my rail activities for the weekend, although I did ride M-Line car #754 to pick up food at a Cava and DART LRV #221 to get back to Love Field.

Next week I head up the Connecticut River Valley to check out some vintage signaling on the Vermonter Route.