© Jamie Foster, 2005-present
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California Zephyr
July 6-8, 2010
PB&J Railroad officials journeyed from Kansas City up to Galesburg, IL on the Southwest Chief in order to meet the westbound Zephyr for the remainder of its journey from Chicago to Emeryville, CA. (There are about 160 photos totalling 11mb on this page, so give it a little time to load...)
Jamie flew from CA to KC to join forces with Bill.
Denver, CO.
Southwest Chief to Chicago...
Some Amish folks were taking the train all the way to California and then up into Oregon to meet with some furniture customers of theirs.
We got off the northbound Chief at Galesburg, IL.
There's a nice railroad museum right next door to the Galesburg Amtrak station, and it's collection includes this steam locomotive No. 3006. Note the darker pipe towards the top of the picture running horizontally. This system pulled coal from the tender into the firebox.
Here comes our westbound Zephyr.
The midwest was having a very wet spring and summer. In fact, today's weather was quite stormy and overcast (not the best for photos, particularly when shooting through Amglass at speed).
We'd never seen a "shuttlewagon" before.
This yellow "Englewood" trolley was a bit of a surprise just east of Denver.
The conductor was on point in the last sleeper (ours!) as the Zephyr shoved back into the Denver station. This sleeper and the coach in front of it were left in Denver. We had to move to another sleeper to continue to California.
The windows were washed in Denver!
Looks like we could end up on some train forum.
On up into the Rockies...
(Playing with the color a little...)
Most of the wildlife we saw on this trip was human.
From top to bottom: two lanes of highway (I-70), a bicycle path, river, and rail.
The cable ride across the river was very busy.
Glenwood Springs.
Thanks to Mike Massee for suggesting to zoom in on the car to read the placards/marks. Seeing a radioactive symbol and noting the HIRX car mark, Google came up with the following reference from drgw.net:
MOAB TAILINGS TRAIN UPDATE
Posted Sunday, April 5 2009 at 1831 h MDT
The massive ($805M) project to remove the tailings pile from the old Atlas Uranium Mill near Moab, UT, is progressing and nearly at the point where they're ready to move the first contaminated soil. The pile will be moved by rail from near the east portal of Bootlegger Tunnel to Brendel (aka Crescent Junction), where it will be unloaded and dropped in a permanent storage cell. The schedule has also changed. Thanks to $108M in stimulus money being put into the project, trains will now run with 34 rather than the planned 22 cars (with the additional 12 cars added later this year), and operate seven days per week rather than four. In addition, the project will now create 275 jobs, significantly greater than the originally estimated 125. Union Pacific, for their part, has been doing intensive track rehabilitation on the Cane Creek Branch since last October. Continuously welded rail, numerous new ties, and fresh ballasting/surfacing have all been part of the job. In addition, a spur has been cut in at Emkay for loading the dirty dirt cars, and at Brendel for unloading them at the containment site. The initial move is supposed to take place on 20-Apr-2009, just three weeks away. The project is expected to take over a decade (completion between 2019 and 2028, depending on who you believe). So, there should be plenty of time to get out there and photograph the surge in branch traffic. The cars for this project are starting to arrive in Grand Junction. They're red articulated spine-type container haulers, with each segment having four containers (stacked two high). A single car consists of two segments, articulated in the middle with a single shared truck. Reporting marks are HIRX, and they appear to be in the 97xx series. (Thanks to Scott from the Colorado Railfans list, who spotted a set of them on either MNYGJ or MNYRO at Bond back in late March.) - NDHolmes
Helper, UT landmark.
Crossing Nevada...
That's a wooden flume on the far side of the river.
We saw many MOW and signal crews along the entire trip.
We found the Lionel trackage!
Vampire / UP 1989 D&RG heritage locomotive (somewhere between Donner Pass and Sacramento).
Martinez, CA.
Emeryville, CA. End of the line for us and the Zephyr. Now it's off to the wine country where we'll meet up with the rest of the family...
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