Western Railroad Discussion > Copper Concentrate on the move in SLC

To all on TO,

I was at North Yard here in Salt Lake City this morning and observed what appeared to be a meet between the northbound loads and southbound empty copper concentrate trains UP runs out of Wendover en route to Vancouver, WA as I understand it.

The northbound loads departed North Yard at 9:38 AM (MDT) behind UP 6514 (lead, no wings) and UP 7974 followed by 59 cars with DPU's UP 4584 and UP 8380 on the rear. No sooner had this train cleared the yard than the southbound empties entered the yard after sitting under the I-15 overpass north of the 18th North crossing. The empties pulled by my location at 18th North at 9:48 AM behind UP 5378 in the lead followed by brand-new UP 2577 pulling 60 empties. All of the freight cars were gons with "CHTT" reporting marks over various UP, C&NW and MP previous ownership. All of the gondolas had what looked like rubber or plastic tarps over them, including the empties. It is my understanding that these trains carry copper concentrate from Wendover for export through the Port of Vancouver, WA. The concentrate is trucked from the former Ruth Copper Pit (ex Kennecott) southwest of Ely, NV and loaded onto the trains at the east end of Wendover, UT. If anyone knows more about these trains, which only seem to run a few times per month, I would appreciate their sharing more background and operational info here on TO.

Thanks in advance!

Best wishes,

ShastaDaylight

Hi,

See the discussion:   http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2304023,2304102#msg-2304102

The info I had about these trains is in my reply in that discussion.  It's six years old, but I understand it's still
mostly valid. The Robinson mine is now operated by the Robinson Nevada Mining Co., a subsidiary of
KGHM International.

Don

It's surprising that the movements are still in process. When Q-R reopened the facilty they built a new concentrator
specifically to mine the tailings and remaining dirt left from the KCC days. While the copper content was low there was
still enough gold and silver to make the operation profitable since they weren't undertaking a new dig. I'm sure they've
since moved into cleaning up the old dig but the real focus was going to be the large moly deposits South of the old pit.

Out

Thanks for the additional informtion on this interesting freight movement...

ShastaDaylight

Here's a shot I took of the operation in Wendover.  It's the first picture-  <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,3221223,3221223#msg-3221223&gt;

mapboy