1981 Trip, Day 9: To Lincoln in search of the U25B!

BN Nebraska division 1981: lots of small towns with local
switchers, like SD9 6170 at Fairmont. . .

June 14: We awoke under a slight schmutz of cirrus overhead. Trusty COMPASS printouts from the Denver roundhouse in hand, we were happily headed east towards Lincoln, Nebraska, maintenance base for the wheezing four-motor GE relics BN still had on its system. I was happy, at least. Marc. . .well, he didn't care much for BN, cared little for the flat lands, and his enthusiasm for GE locomotives was even lower than that.

But onward we went! Burlington Northern in 1981 was still a railroad operated with a lot of local switchers, yard jobs, clerks, and locomotives at outlying terminals. We photographed local power along the mainline at Holdredge, Hastings and Fairmont, places where branch lines still met the main and local turns originated. We took note of ex-Q SD9 6170 at Fairmont, tied down on the "Wymore main" parallel of the Lincoln mainline. Then it was into Lincoln. Now, to say I was unprepared for Lincoln is putting it mildly. I had no idea where the big yard in town was--but how tough could it be? Ha! We drove around aimlessly, finding the passenger depot, and, east of town, the big ex-Q car shop at Havelock. Before we could track down where BN's major terminal was (north and west, by the way, from the passenger depot), we saw a southbound train departing towards Table Rock.


Nirvana! U30B lead 5471 leads a southbound out of Carling yard. . .


. . .and ex-GN U25B 5408 chuffs away. I could've hugged it!. . .

We had no idea where this train was going (towards Table Rock, where it would enter the St. Joe sub towards Kansas City), and we really didn't have very good maps, but we managed to follow him around 30 miles across the corn fields of eastern Nebraska, getting one more shot of him east of Sterling at 1630, nicely lit by a break in the storm clouds. Storm clouds? Oh yeah. The area was under a Tornado Watch, and somewhere in the area, a Tornado Warning was out. Where? We had no clue. Marc was less than thrilled by this, being a Puget Sound native where thunderstorms are rare and tornadoes just don't happen. Somewhere near Beatrice, we got a room in a motel and watched the TV news spew out storm warnings the rest of the day.

Leave the Rockies to watch trains in the plains? Are you crazy? Maybe so.

BN 5471S in storm light. . . east of Sterling. While others hide

in their storm shelters, we "get the shot". . .

1981 Trip, Day 7 & 8: Rio Grande and the Joint Line

Like a CTC Board come to life: Westbound on Big Ten. . .

June 12: Finally, we'd reached Colorado. To be fair to Marc, we'd probably pursued more of my interests than his on this trip. At least for much of today, we'd be in his nirvana: along the Rio Grande west of Denver. First: Hobby Shops, including Caboose Hobbies and another place out in Englewood. By afternoon, we were perched atop a ridge just west of the famous Big Ten curve between Rocky and Plainview, watching a westbound claw its way up the Front Range. It was a location I'd seen in an old book my dad had on the Moffat Road, showing a series of photos of Rio Grande in the Perlman era: new CTC, new F-units and geeps making rolling meets, etc. Today, here came the 5315/3028 (SD45/GP30) on 57 cars, GP40's 3090/3106 shoving on the rear. After watching this show unfold like a life-sized CTC machine, we drove up to Plainview, above Tunnel One, to watch the action bagging a downhill coal load meeting an empty. We then slipped down to Rocky ahead of the load, and photographed it leaving the Big Ten curves (train #706, 5384/5364/5357/5342/5343 on 78 loads, 2 more T2 helpers ahead of 26 more cars).


Heavy coal train #706 at East Rocky. . .

For reasons lost to us now--probably because we were losing the sun in the mountains--we headed south of Littleton for a little Joint Line action, happening onto two southbound ATSF/C&S trains (these were jointly operated years before the BNSF merger). Both had interesting power: the first, with Santa Fe F45/SD45 and 2 BN SD40-2's; the second, with two Santa Fe C30-7's and a BN SD40-2. We also saw a northbound Rio Grande train with 8 SD45T-2's and a single GP35.


Nice! F45 leads the way at Sedalia. . .


Ending the day with glint at Orsa, with ATSF C30-7's. . .

We drove back to Plainview to sleep for the night in the back of the Corolla, a night unremarked except for being awakened before sunrise by a poor chap whose night of passion in his father's car with his girlfriend had been spoiled when the car battery died, requiring us to give him a jump.

June 13: The next morning, we were in place and ready for the action. First off, a westbound with a pair of SD40T-2's (5406/5408) on a short train at 0625. Screaming light, and we shot him again at the east switch at Rocky. A half hour later, here came westbound #87, looking sweet coming out of tunnel one with four GP40/35s (3122/3091/3056/3033) and 50 cars, including a cut of Coors beer on insulated BN boxcars, 0700.


First train of the AM, in great light at Rocky. . .

Beer up front, #87 leaves Tunnel One. . .

A half hour after that, another eastbound, with seven SD40T-2's on the head end with 66 cars, mostly coal. . .a Moffatt local, perhaps? He waited at Rocky for the train we'd been hoping to see, westbound #17, the Rio Grande Zephyr. Now fully "restored" to respectability since the last time we saw him, the train was rightfully equipped with A-B-B F9's on the head end, the dome obs on the rear, and 8 cars, five of them domes. Rather than do the easy thing and chase them west to Utah--something completely feasible--we then broke camp and headed east.

Silver Lady swings out of Big Ten and into Coal Creek Canyon. . .

. . .emerging soon after at Tunnel One. . .

Next stop: BN's former Burlington shops in Denver, where we had an accomodating shop foreman run us a lineup of where all the railroad's U25, U28 and U30B locomotives were. Mark had been given his bone--he'd seen the Rio Grande--and now we were in pursuit mode of my locomotive d'jour, BN's U25B fleet, of which only a half-dozen or so were still in service. This didn't sit well with Marc--here we were in Colorado, surrounded by his favorite Rio Grande, and I was leading him east to the flatlands of Nebraska on a pipedream to find what must be among his least-favorite locomotives. Looking back, I can only say. . I agree. What was he thinking?? Give up the Rockies for the prairies???

What was he thinking? High-sun GP30, U-boats at Brush. . .

By early afternoon, we were east of Denver, along the single-track former Q mainline, stopping at Brush to photoraph an eastbound with typical Lincoln to Denver power: GP30 2246/U28B 5454/GP30 2233/U30B 5477. We followed this ponderous drag east, right out of the sun, and eventually got bored with its slow presence. While even today this line east of Brush couldn't be called "swamped" with trains, at the time, there were perhaps three freights in each direction daily, a few locals, and an Amtrak each way. . .and that was it (today, there's a bit more traffic, and CSX-bound coal trains out of the Powder River Basin also run this way, along with their corresponding empties).We didn't see another train to McCook, the next division point. At the roundhouse rested local power: tasty former CB&Q GP20s, 30s and a U30B 5483. We stayed at a Best Western in town that night. I do remember it was clean and tidy.

BN green rarely looked THIS good. . .

1981 trip, Day 6: US Steel's Atlantic City railroad

What a sight: F-units leaving South Pass. . .

June 11: We awoke the next morning in the middle of dead-ass nowhere. Actually, we were near the settlement of South Pass City, not too far from Atlantic City, where US Steel operated a giant iron ore strip mine. Ore was mined, then concentrated into taconite pellets, loaded into ore jennies, and hauled over 70 miles south on US Steel's own railroad to a connection with the Union Pacific about 10 miles north of Rock Springs. From there, UP forwarded the ore to US Steel's Geneva Works near Provo. A train a day of ore traversed the railroad in relative obscurity since its construction in 1963, its notoriety gaining only as its motive power, EMD F7s, started to become more rare as the 70s progressed. By 1981, matched sets of F-units were quite rare indeed, especially in six unit sets, and quite amazingly so in A-B-B-B-A formation!



Matched A-B-B-B-B-A set--with diaphrams between units!

Not too long after sunrise, after we dispensed with the morning chill (South Pass is one of the nation's more obscure crossings of the Continental Divide, at nearly 7500'), the unmistakable sound of EMD's leaning hard on dynamic brakes to hold the 13,000 ton train of ore against the descending 2.2 percent grade pierced the clear air.

Downgrade with the Sweetwater Range in the background. . .

We spent the morning chasing the 106 car train powered by 724A/712B/724B/726B/723B/723A down to the UP connection, watched the direct hand-off with the UP train out of Green River (with matched C30-7's 2490/2491/2492/2493/2494), and headed back north with 109 empties, 3800 tons, departing Winton Junction at 1pm. We dashed ahead of the empties on their way back north; access to the railroad was made at occasional dirt roads that branched off the main highway several miles to the US Steel line.

Surprised by a work train, northbound at MP 58. . .

Blasting upgrade with 109 empties north of MP58. . .

Plenty of clouds, but some timely sun breaks. . .

We set up at MP58 well ahead of him, and were surprised when a 10-car work train rolled north, powered by F7A 726A. . . running backwards. That was a first for me! The sun played hide-and-seek with clouds all the way back to South Pass, where the train disappeared from view as it headed into the mine around 3:30pm. We headed back to Rock Springs for dinner, then east along the UP mainline, en route to Denver and the Rio Grande. Don't recall where we slept that evening, but we happened to photograph a couple of train on the Overland route, represented by a view of four SD40-2's near Hanna at sunset.

Postscript: US Steel shut down the Atlantic City operation in 1983, the railroad abandoned and the locomotives either scrapped or sold off.

Just another train with SD40-2's on UP's steel highway. . .