Detours

by Steve Eshom

Thanks to maintenance of way projects on the Forsyth sub several empty coal trains from Minnesota power plants are returning to the Powder River Basin via the Great Falls and Laurel subs. This is of course fabulous for me since this will add to the normal manifest traffic. The first of the two detours that ran on Monday left Great Falls around 9am. Since most traffic out here runs in the afternoon and evening seeing a morning train was also a great surprise!

E BENBTM0 56 climbs through the canyon between Raynesford and Geyser. Don’t let anyone tell you this part of Montana is flat!

E BENBTM0 56 accelerates out of the 25 mph restriction as it passes the new elevator at Stanford

Later in the afternoon Great Falls kicked out the second detour.  At one point the dispatcher was dealing with 5 trains on the Laurel and Great Falls subs!  Needless to say he was busy issuing warrants and setting up meets.  To top it all off the track inspectors were doing heat runs!

E SPCSAM0 72 crosses Skull Creek just south of Stanford.

After negotiating a 10 mph restriction in the Winham tunnel (leaving me standing on the roof of the Yukon out in the 95 degree sun) the E SPCCAM0 72 rounds the sweeping curve into Windham.

On Wednesday another detour passed through Stanford around around 6:45am but I missed it.  No, I wasn’t sleeping, I was on the road to chase the M-LAUSWE out of Great Falls (more on that chase later) and couldn’t get a handle on its location quick enough.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pm and is filed under trip reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.