mickoo
Western Thunderer
Jumping over the last few days to today and Mullan's Pass, there are some reasonable photos in the past few days and I'll get to them later at some point.
Mullan's Pass is Ex Great Northern, then BN, then MRL and now back to BNSF, I wanted some photos of MRL before it gets erased, some say it won't, speaking with track crews and engineers most fear it will. The staff have a protected six year agreement but nearly all agree that after six years it'll all get carved up. It'll take BNSF a while to repaint the units and some might get patched in the mean time, but that's something no one seems to know for sure.
I'd passed through here on Saturday heading for Cajon, in hindsight I should have stayed here, but if I had then part of me would have been wondering if that was the right thing to do or not. Those photos I'll do later as well, I still need to get my night shot at Missoula, tried last night and it was bare, I kid you not the whole area was bare, one train with a single SD70 on the end and nothing else.
I left in disgust, tried six motels and the cheapest was $160 for a 2 star motel, apparently there was a big concert in town and prices were about 140-150% more than normal, I opted to sleep in the rental at a rest area 40 miles down the road. A little uncomfortable but no slamming doors, running kids and decent facilities to clean up. It was a bit cold so left the rental running all night, cost me $10 in gas, thereby saving $150 on a motel. It's okay for the odd day here and there.
The upside to sleeping in the rental was that I was closer to Mullan's and up before the sun, I arrived at Elliston where the swing helpers sometimes cut out, only to be greeted by a long line of MOW equipment getting ready for the day. I did pass three coal trains on the way and I knew there was a manifest coming as it came by the rest area just before I left. The three coalies had been pushed over the hill before the outage, none had crews but would move West later in the day.
Sure enough the manifest came plodding up the hill.
Followed by a swing helper set heading East, MRL only cut in helpers to westbound trains due to the stiffer grade, these are not DPU's but manned helpers cut in and out over Mullan, other than Bozier (again MRL) I believe these are the last of their kind in the US; whether they still do this when BNSF take full control no one seems to know.
The the line shut down for six hours and eventually I got my first westbound through Mullan, it's a straight bore and reasonably short but on a grade. You can hear the engines on the east side for about 20 minutes before they get to the tunnel, there must be particular acoustic spots because first you hear the GE's chugging and then minutes later the EMDs whining and later the GE's on the rear.
Just before the westbound arrived an eastbound came up the grade and stopped at the lights.
Then the westbound main event.
Still laying sand and crawling at less than 20 mph up the grade.
and over the small crossing here, not public though.
Finally the wide shot, I didn't quite get this right, tried to do too many shots with one train and ended up clipping one of the summit boards.
The shot is important (for me) for two reasons, in the back ground are a signs and notices crew, their job is to mark each crossing with new BNSF signage, they have 716 route miles to do and once the signs are in they're on BNSF asset register, the paperwork is insane just for sticking notices up and the crew were very friendly and we had a good chat. The second point is that this is the penultimate train to pass the crossing under MRL ownership.
Next is was time for the swing helpers to make their appearance, Mullan is known as a smoke hole, solely down to EMD ACe's, you can see how black the entrance is in the previous shots; despite a westerly breeze, the grade and eastbound train tends to push all the smoke out of the highest point, the western portal.
You can see the smoke in the background but that's tame! Wider shot showing crew on board and all windows open the clear the cab.
Then it was the turn of the grainer which had come up the west side to go down the bore, it clears pretty quick and this is only about five minutes after the other had come up.
Mid train helpers from a slightly higher view point, I'll try this one tomorrow if the weather holds but it's supposed to rain quite hard here, the vegetation needs it badly, as do the smoke jumpers who've had a torrid year so far, it's not been too bad here as the vegetation still has some green, but further west they've had it bad.
This was the very last train through Mullan's before the BNSF signage.
I cut this one close to the track as I wanted to show what the new view looks like with the BNSF signs, they add interest but I liked the older less is more view, but it's changed forever now.
The crew were happy enough and he was going real slow, the driver opened his window and held his sleeve across his mouth and laughed, the trailing MAC was blowing smoke really well, not that you can see it too well in the photo, but when the swing helpers came through it got real bad.
I was really on the wrong side, sunny side up but the curve hides the bore, once the helpers were past I walked around the curve a bit and it was clear what the lead driver was on about.
At the same time another train had come up the west side, the trailing Dash 9 was ailing badly, a re-stored unit it really need some TLC and sounded really rough as it went past.
On the rear where the swing helpers from earlier, sometimes they come back light engine, sometimes on the tail end of trains that don't really need them. There's always four helpers but they switch in and out the number of units needed dependent on tonnage.
Mullan's Pass is Ex Great Northern, then BN, then MRL and now back to BNSF, I wanted some photos of MRL before it gets erased, some say it won't, speaking with track crews and engineers most fear it will. The staff have a protected six year agreement but nearly all agree that after six years it'll all get carved up. It'll take BNSF a while to repaint the units and some might get patched in the mean time, but that's something no one seems to know for sure.
I'd passed through here on Saturday heading for Cajon, in hindsight I should have stayed here, but if I had then part of me would have been wondering if that was the right thing to do or not. Those photos I'll do later as well, I still need to get my night shot at Missoula, tried last night and it was bare, I kid you not the whole area was bare, one train with a single SD70 on the end and nothing else.
I left in disgust, tried six motels and the cheapest was $160 for a 2 star motel, apparently there was a big concert in town and prices were about 140-150% more than normal, I opted to sleep in the rental at a rest area 40 miles down the road. A little uncomfortable but no slamming doors, running kids and decent facilities to clean up. It was a bit cold so left the rental running all night, cost me $10 in gas, thereby saving $150 on a motel. It's okay for the odd day here and there.
The upside to sleeping in the rental was that I was closer to Mullan's and up before the sun, I arrived at Elliston where the swing helpers sometimes cut out, only to be greeted by a long line of MOW equipment getting ready for the day. I did pass three coal trains on the way and I knew there was a manifest coming as it came by the rest area just before I left. The three coalies had been pushed over the hill before the outage, none had crews but would move West later in the day.
Sure enough the manifest came plodding up the hill.
Followed by a swing helper set heading East, MRL only cut in helpers to westbound trains due to the stiffer grade, these are not DPU's but manned helpers cut in and out over Mullan, other than Bozier (again MRL) I believe these are the last of their kind in the US; whether they still do this when BNSF take full control no one seems to know.
The the line shut down for six hours and eventually I got my first westbound through Mullan, it's a straight bore and reasonably short but on a grade. You can hear the engines on the east side for about 20 minutes before they get to the tunnel, there must be particular acoustic spots because first you hear the GE's chugging and then minutes later the EMDs whining and later the GE's on the rear.
Just before the westbound arrived an eastbound came up the grade and stopped at the lights.
Then the westbound main event.
Still laying sand and crawling at less than 20 mph up the grade.
and over the small crossing here, not public though.
Finally the wide shot, I didn't quite get this right, tried to do too many shots with one train and ended up clipping one of the summit boards.
The shot is important (for me) for two reasons, in the back ground are a signs and notices crew, their job is to mark each crossing with new BNSF signage, they have 716 route miles to do and once the signs are in they're on BNSF asset register, the paperwork is insane just for sticking notices up and the crew were very friendly and we had a good chat. The second point is that this is the penultimate train to pass the crossing under MRL ownership.
Next is was time for the swing helpers to make their appearance, Mullan is known as a smoke hole, solely down to EMD ACe's, you can see how black the entrance is in the previous shots; despite a westerly breeze, the grade and eastbound train tends to push all the smoke out of the highest point, the western portal.
You can see the smoke in the background but that's tame! Wider shot showing crew on board and all windows open the clear the cab.
Then it was the turn of the grainer which had come up the west side to go down the bore, it clears pretty quick and this is only about five minutes after the other had come up.
Mid train helpers from a slightly higher view point, I'll try this one tomorrow if the weather holds but it's supposed to rain quite hard here, the vegetation needs it badly, as do the smoke jumpers who've had a torrid year so far, it's not been too bad here as the vegetation still has some green, but further west they've had it bad.
This was the very last train through Mullan's before the BNSF signage.
I cut this one close to the track as I wanted to show what the new view looks like with the BNSF signs, they add interest but I liked the older less is more view, but it's changed forever now.
The crew were happy enough and he was going real slow, the driver opened his window and held his sleeve across his mouth and laughed, the trailing MAC was blowing smoke really well, not that you can see it too well in the photo, but when the swing helpers came through it got real bad.
I was really on the wrong side, sunny side up but the curve hides the bore, once the helpers were past I walked around the curve a bit and it was clear what the lead driver was on about.
At the same time another train had come up the west side, the trailing Dash 9 was ailing badly, a re-stored unit it really need some TLC and sounded really rough as it went past.
On the rear where the swing helpers from earlier, sometimes they come back light engine, sometimes on the tail end of trains that don't really need them. There's always four helpers but they switch in and out the number of units needed dependent on tonnage.
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infuriatingly the best ones. Still the weather is the same tomorrow and I'm in a different motel ($84 instead of $134) which is much quieter than last nights and cheaper so will add a couple more days on.
, Arlington trash train is good, Cajon is good (I know some really good audio locations) and Mullan is good, there will be others, dozens I suspect.
, there were two errors (since corrected) and probably more I've not found yet 
