Western Railroad Discussion > Sunset-Gila Bend to Tucson

Track crews were out working between Gila Bend and Maricopa this weekend, plus a half dozen trains were parked without crews. Looks like the trackwork is moving east from Yuma.

Winks, that should reduce the daytime traffic. Or will the UP run trains in "fleets"? Amtrak still has to get through there.

They where parking wb's all over the Tucson area. Eb's where still trickling in though. After around 1500 they start the parade of wb's back up with the hottest trains getting crews first.

The current track work is Gila Bend to Maricopa. I have a feeling that Maricopa to Picacho or Tucson will be next. The track inspector has been putting all kinds of temp 10 mph restrictions between Tucson and Pichaco everyday.

Amtrak is still getting thru, but can be up to 5 hours late.

I wish they would get this work done. This week end was the pits for railfanning.

Check my group for some railfan reports.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tucsonrailfans/

Ron

Yes, the track gangs were out big time. PF and I flew into AZ on Wednesday night from DC, for some UP fanning. Thursday was good, but Friday we saw one moving train during daylight. There was a broken rail east of Tucson and then around 4pm a train went into emergency east of Pantano. The crew had an hour left before they went on the law so they where sending a crew out to replace them. We said "screw this" and headed to Mexico for some night time entertainment.

We had a very good day on Saturday around Cienega Creek. We worked that area getting many different shots. Thank Ron.

I will be posting some photos tonight from our little trip.

east coast foamers

winks...after seeing yur note to the effect that the crews worked over the weekend, I am venturing to bet this crew is a "custom hours" crew...work 8 ten hour days straight, and then they get 7 days off straight. Or, it could be a gang that's scheduled 16 days straight, and then they get the rest of the month off! Definitely bad luck for you on the timing... Has anybody paid attention when their last "weekend" was and when they resumed operations? Inquiring minds want to know...thanks!

The weekend before last (Feb 2-3) there was activity and the weekend prior (Jan 26-27) to that. I would say the the weekend of Jan 26-27 was due to the majority of the work around Yuma being completed and they did not have the crew curfew in affect. The week end of Feb 2-3 might have been account of equipment repositioning.

Either way it is really messing up things down here. Not really interested in seeing parked trains on the mainline, but it does provide some nice roster shots.