Western Railroad Discussion > SP Leads on the Cima Sub (& an operations question)

Today during a visit to the Cima Sub to catch the searchlight signals on their last days in operation (the new masts are all lying at Kelso, and a new signal was placed at CP C218 during the day), my brother & I lucked into a westbound with patched ex-SP 6291 leading. Attached is an image of the train passing the searchlight at Hayden. This train consisted entirely of gons and hoppers, so I presume it was some sort of tie extra? Sounded like they were bound for West Colton either way.

The other question I had regarded an intermodal we captured in the morning. 7403 West consisted primarily of K-Line containers, and looked quite a bit like some KG1LAs that I'd seen before. However, this train had two mid-train DPUs, which I haven't seen on a UP intermodal in SoCal prior. What train was this, and is this a normal occurance now? Thanks for any info! We'll have many more images from today's adventures up here in the near future.

---

The stack train you saw was most likey the KG3LB. When its running over 10,000FT the DP's have to be cut in due to train length limits, there cannot be more than 10,000FT of train between the head end consist and DP consist. The train with the patched SP unit was a dirty dirt train heading to the West Colton Yard to be reloaded since they are doing track work in the yard.

CS

UP 6291 was on the OCJWC-26 (Ore-Columbia Jct.-W. Colton) Looks like it was empty Dirty Dirt cars.

UP 7403 was on the KG3LB-22 that had 178 loads-10,482 tons-11,073'

Thanks guys!

Posted from iPhone

SPatch and searchlights....awesome! Nice shot.

~Ryan