Western Railroad Discussion > Rio Grande 5371 on the LJP45 Local

I took a Thursday off from work, and headed east toward Rio Grande land. A couple of buddies and me had a great day taking photos in the sunshine along the desert territory east of Helper. We arrived and found the LJP45 "dirt train" parked at East Helper yard. Here the UP 2776 appears just after sunrise beneath the wonderful Book Cliffs...

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A second view of the LJP45, this time from "Helper Hill" at the south end of the yard. UP2776 is (obviously) a patched and renumbered SP SD40M-2, the 8700, that was delivered to the SP rebuilt by MK in December 1994...

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Rio Grande 5371 is caught in the middle of a switch move at Helper yard. The 5371 is the last original numbered D&RGW locomotive active on the UP roster...

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The LJP45 is headed east up the Sunnyside Sub at milepost 7.1 near Banning. The dinky 9 car train is a far cry from the extended consists this local moved when it hauled household trash from Wasatch Front transload sites...

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If there's one thing that makes this unit a unique SD40, it's the profile view. Note the long "gap" between the lead truck and the small D&RGW fuel tank and the daylight through the cool air intake area beneath the cooling fans...

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The LJP45 is required to stop at milepost 9 to throw a derail switch on the main. Here the brakeman catches a ride on the last car as the train departs east of the derail. The ECDC terminal and yard is about one mile up the hill from this point...

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If you have visited this area in recent memory, it's sure not what it used to be! With the trash haul gone completely from ECDC, this terminal is very, very quiet. There used to be a frenetic pace about ECDC when the dirt train arrived. Trash containers were lifted and moved to a dump site one after another, just south of the railhead, but it's all gone now. Apparently there was a staff of over 50 persons working here. That has shrunk to 15 today.

In this image, the UP 2776 has set out one flat of containerized dirty dirt at the old yard area. A stack of former trash containers can be spotted at far left. Apparently these boxes are being repainted on site and then shipped elsewhere...

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Seems like a pretty good match...three engines for three cars. My, this local is but a shell of it's former self! With no trash container/flats to haul back and forth the dirt train looks a lot more like a local that ever before. Apparently the LJP45 travels up the branch to ECDC only tri-weekly. Remember when it was a six day per week operation with trains beween 20-50 cars? Only the unit trains of dirty dirt from the San Francisco Bay area approach that length today.

Here's the truncated LJP45 heading west through the site of old Farnham siding, just west of Mounds with three empties for Helper yard...

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See if you can count how many D&RGW items are found at this setting, taken at Helper on February 9th.

James

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It's ironic to note that--just like the 5371--the DRGW3110 made its last stand hauling the same dirt that heads out the Sunnyside branch, only this time 900 miles from Helper in San Francisco. The GP40-2 worked the job shuttling dirt cars between Pier 96 and the yard at South San Francisco this past November and December and this was its last assignment before being patched at Roseville in early January. The two attached photos were taken on the Caltrain mainline just south of S.F. in December. The DRGW presense on this job still lives on, though: patched UP1342(DRGW3116) is working this job today.

Looks like the ECDC facility has become heavily dependent on the Bay Area dirt for its remaining traffic--thanks for a look at things on the "other end".

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GrandeGold Wrote:
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> See if you can count how many D&RGW items are
> found at this setting, taken at Helper on February
> 9th.
>
> James

Great stuff! I'm green with envy!
Four? or Five? if you count the towers as one each?

also I wonder if the rail in the photo is stamped "CF&I" from Pee-eblo, Colo. :)

Nice series once again James...appreciate your contributions.

Mike

Mile high said "also I wonder if the rail in the photo is stamped "CF&I" from Pee-eblo, Colo. :)". Actually, its Pweb-low. At least it is to those of us that grew up there!

KK

True. But ask any railroader, especially one who has worked in Pueblo for awhile, and he will invariably pronounce it "Pee-eblo". Believe me, the first time I heard this pronounciation, it made me crazy. I thought the guy (a RR official from Salt Lake City) was an idiot.......;)

I'll leave that one alone for obvious reasons! ;)

Then you've got the poo-eblo folks. Same deal with Minturn, you've got your Min-urns and Min-turns. Growing up in the area, I've also been a Min-turn and a Pweb-lo.

TME

Yup, I've always heard it pronounced "Minnern". ;)

MHF

MileHiFoam Wrote:
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> Yup, I've always heard it pronounced "Minnern".
> ;)
>
> MHF

In Texas it's, "Minnern y'all!

Con

MileHiFoam Wrote:
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> Yup, I've always heard it pronounced "Minnern".
> ;)
>
> MHF

In Texas, it's "Minnern y'all.

Con