Western Railroad Discussion > The UP in Moab, UT

Spent a few days in the Moab, UT area. What is the UP hauling out in the trash-like containers?

Darin Umlauft
A WC, SOO and GBW fan visiting Utah.

Posted from Android

Uranium tailings. Long story short: Uranium is processed near Colorado River. Uranium tailings are placed in a pile near river. After many years, river is in danger of cutting into tailing pile and contaminating the entire river system with radioactive soil. Solution is to move tailings via train from old dump site to new dump site at Thompsons (where the branch joins the mainline) that is a much safer location.

That would explain the digging near the river in that area. Do they still go to Potash or has that service ended.

Darin Umlauft

Posted from Android

wictl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That would explain the digging near the river in
> that area. Do they still go to Potash or has that
> service ended.
>
> Darin Umlauft
>
> Posted from Android


The unloading and trucking point is at Brendel, Crescent Junction, UT, on the Interstate.

Potash is a weekly run on Sundays. There have occasionally been other trips during the week, but not often. Dirt trains run 6 days a week, two round trips a day. Out of Brendel at 0600 and 1800 or soemthing close to that.

Rob

As of February, after four years of work, they had moved 36 percent of the 16 million tons to be moved. They started in April 2009.

http://www.utahrails.net/mining/moab-tailings.php

Don Strack
http://www.utahrails.net/

tax dollars at work, tailings were consolidated and stockpiled earlier, the previous effort now deemed insufficient. They almost trucked them out, glad they used rail while they can.