Western Railroad Discussion > York Canyon Remains

The loadout today. The trees in the lower left is where the loader was. To the right of it where the rock ditch runs to the track is where two 5000 ton silos stood. Second shot close up
Far side where the cut is is the old loadout was. Forget the name.

Far left is the reclaimed overburden, as they quit mining it and dug the top off. 500ft deep to get to the vein.

Didn't pay attention, but I think the stuff in the loop is for the gas wells in the area.

About 80 cars from the loader, F knuckle, a reminder you are loading on a 2 percent.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/09 18:26 by SD45X.

---

---

---

Wow, great shots and narative.
JB

Doesn't that look like a great place for Nuke storage??

rehunn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Doesn't that look like a great place for Nuke
> storage??

Too many faults and seismic activity I bet...
http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geop/recentquakes.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/09 20:08 by NH2006.

Was York Canyon an underground mine, or surface like Powder River?

Are all the coal reserves run out, or just too scattered to recover at current prices?

Any chance this area will be mined again?

Hard to believe not long ago heavy trains came here often, pulled by warbonnet GE's...

Good stuff, 45X,
Isn't this the home of the "gull wing" cab?
Up4306

To Coach's question, there's still plenty of coal there, but
it's underground and hard to recover.

I remember seeing the unit trains come down Cajon pass in the late 60s/early 70s, on their way to Kaiser steel. Its interesting to finally see some pics of the place they originated.

Coal is high BTU but high in sulpher content.

Yes, reason for the gull wing cab.

a google earth view looking south showing the balloon track

---

hotrail Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember seeing the unit trains come down Cajon
> pass in the late 60s/early 70s, on their way to
> Kaiser steel. Its interesting to finally see some
> pics of the place they originated.

Here's an image from 1976 showing the ATSF SD's and robot car which were used on the York Canyon trains on an eastbound drag freight at Sullivan's Curve.

---

eminence_grise Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here's an image from 1976 showing the ATSF SD's
> and robot car which were used on the York Canyon
> trains on an eastbound drag freight at Sullivan's
> Curve.

Can you expand on this 'robot car' item? Air repeater? And why was it prevalent on the York Canyon Sub?

My understanding is that the ATSF York Canyon trains used Harris "Locotrol 1.05", which was too bulky to fit in a locomotive. The "Robot Car' received radio commands from the lead locomotive, and translated them into air brake and control functions to the mid-train locomotives. As such, only the lead locomotive and robot car needed special equipment to operate in "Locotrol" mode.The SD26's in the picture are the York Canyon power.

The radio/air brake interface involved a "manifold" about the size of a V8 engine, and the logic cabinets were about the size of a large filing cabinet. They needed to be kept warm, so a caboose heater was inside the car also. CP,BCR,Southern and ATSF went the robot car route.

Like many other things, what took up a whole lot of space in the pre-micro chip days is now contained in a small box in the electrical cabinet of locomotives equipped to operate in the DPU "Distributed Power Mode'.