Western Railroad Discussion > grinding the Joint Line . . . .

. . .  since the majority of the maintanance agreement changed from UP to BNSF in May on the joint UP BNSF Denver Pueblo Joint Line main BNSF has done a bunch of work including many ten and twelve hour work windows. Tonight happened to notice a Loram rail grinding train coming up the hill out of Monument stopping short of the big curve at Palmer Lake I headed down toward Monument and they had started grinding south toward Monument. Never seeing  a grinding train at night gave it my best shot as it was approaching down town Monument (top and middle) . They stopped grinding short of the crossing in Mon then headed for a spur to clear the main (bottom).
JB

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Those machines make pretty photos at night.
Brian Stevens

Three ACES JB !  I think that first shot is the best though.  Thanks for sharing a great bunch.

Kent in CArmel Valley

Thanks for the report.
Must not be too dry, there are many places in the West where nobody would even think of grinding rail this summer.

Thanks, we have had more rain this year than the last five.
JB

Wow, some really nice images given the lighting conditions ... and yes even though it's been a "wet" spring-early summer along the front range ... things are drying out.  It doesn't take much to create a wildfire scenario ... especially if down slope winds are involved.  The timing on this "job" appears to be perfect.

Thanks for the post!

Odyssey
Evergreen, CO

Cool pics!!

Really cool shots.

Ronda Thomas

Yes, they are a mighty impressive sight. I remember coming westbound on a "Z" train one night and upon rounding the curve at Archer all I saw was sparks. Not knowing who was out there I reached for the brake valve in case it was a train on the ground but as we got closer I could make out the grinders profile. It seemed that they had half the lights illuminating the motors turned off and all I saw was the sparks.  Whew!

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Nice shots, John! It looks like there's lots of new ballast on the ground as well...

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

That's one impressive train to see in action and I feel you did a good job capturing it.