Western Railroad Discussion > Amtrak #6 and Utah Ry. current operations

Yesterday, May 23, I spent the whole day around Helper, Utah. Two reasons for my trip were; I wanted to catch Amtrak #6 out east of Helper at first light, and secondly I wanted to check out the current status of coal and especially oil loading in the area. I spent nearly 50 years in oil and gas exploration and production before I retired and still have a very intense interest on the goings on in the local Utah oil patch.  I made my trip to Helper before Utah5005, Spencer Peterson, made his post yesterday evening and so my post is an expansion on his excellent post.
 
I left my home in the Uintah Basin very early so as to beat #6 which leaves Helper at 6:37AM. I found a good spot east of Wellington and settled in to wait for #6. I figured if on time I should see it around 7AM and right at 7, here it comes and I got a good shot in some semi sun conditions as the sun was barely above the horizon and blocked by some thin clouds. See image #1.
 
Then I went over to the Price River Terminal oil loadout and talked with Mark Rice the terminal manager. This is by far the largest oil loading facility in Utah and is capable of loading unit oil trains. In the recent past they have been sending out unit crude oil trains to Midwest City, OK,  Texas and LA I think, but no more. It has been over a month since they shipped any oil and their on site tankage and around 180 oil tank cars on site are completely full. But apparently no buyers. This is the place that loads the oil trains that have been seen in the Denver area in the past.
 
Then I went up to the Utah Ry’s yard and engine house at Martin. I hoped to get some info. as to whether or not they would be running their normal Monday coal train. I found a couple of guys sanding up a 5 unit helper set. See image #2. Conversations with these guys and the conductor who showed up verified that an empty coal train was enroute from Provo and would show up in a couple of hours. The conductor confirmed to me that the Wildcat loadout, which is on Utah Ry. tracks and is only a coal loader and not at a mine and loads both coal and oil is shut down and hasn’t loaded anything in some time. However the loadout manager, Scott Dimmick, is still out there as a watchman of sorts. The Utah Ry, continues to haul acid from the Kennecott smelter in Salt Lake to Martin for transloading to trucks. The acid is for use in Uranium processing at Lisbon Valley south of Moab, Utah. They usually run one train a week from Provo to Martin hauling acid loads in and empties out. Incidently, the Martin yard which has recently been full of crude oil tank cars is now full of covered hoppers; the tanks are gone. This very informative conductor also told me that the weekly Utah coal trains are now using exclusively Union Pacific power. The Utah still maintains a crew and enough 6 axle power at Martin to make up a 5 or 6 unit helper set.
 
After talking to the Utah guys at Martin I went down to the Savage Coal Terminal, at the end of the Castle Valley spur between  Price and Wellington, to await the empty Utah Ry. train. Again this is a loadout only and not a mine. All coal and oil is trucked here. It is a rather intimidating place with no obvious public access. Several years ago I made a “run and gun” visit to the oil loadout, jumped out of my Jeep and fired off a few shots and sped out without anyone challenging me. But today I tried a different tactic. I went around the south side of the facility where the light was better, parked  off the road, and walked in for a quarter mile or so and sat down by some high brush with a good view of the coal silo. The location was next to some out of service tracks that lead to a sawmill and was very safe.  Shortly, a white pickup came along and stopped opposite me about  100 yards away and the driver looked straight at me then left. I had been spotted after all. In a few minutes I got a visit from Vic Masson, the loader operation supervisor. He said I was on private property and wanted to know if I was with some environmental group that had been causing trouble for them lately. After I told him I was an oil and gas guy for 50 years and had no connection with any environmental wackos he and I had a great talk. The Savage loadout has been really slow lately and has completely stopped loading crude oil. They still load several Union Pacific coal trains and one Utah Ry. coal train each week, but that is way down from historic levels. He said I could stay where I was until the Utah train showed up and it was OK to take some pictures. Well, the Utah train showed up shortly, I took several shots of it rounding the loading loop and preparing to load. See images 3 and 4. It had a really crappy looking leader, UP 5399, which had a lot of ugly graffiti on one side and a very faded, nearly bleached out US flag on the other side. UP 6722, an ex. CNW unit was the second unit. UP 5325 and UP 7470 were the rear end DPU helpers. I wish the 6722 had been the leader. Then it was back up to Martin to catch the Utah Helper set as it came out of the yard and entered the UP Provo sub at Utah Ry, Jct. See image 5. This is right at URJ and shows the helper set after it headed for Savage on the UP Provo sub. The set is UTAH  5003, 6062, 6064, 6063, and 5002. 3 SD50’s bracketed by an MK5000 on each end. See image 6 of the helper set at the wye to the Savage spur. The train was cut here and the helper set entrained mid train for the trip up the hill. I met up with 3 visiting railfans from out of state here and we all left to chase the train up Price River Canyon to Soldier Summit. Sorry for some of the muddy pictures, but the sun was blocked by clouds most all day.
 
All for now as I’m tired of typing.
 
Dick Ebright
Roosevelt, Utah
 



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/16 09:47 by 2ebright.

---

---

---

Pictures 4-6

 

---

---

---

In photo 4, I can see what I assume is the rear DP unit through the silo, but waht is off to the right.  Looks like a caboose or a switcher.  What are we seeing????

Rob

Dick, your efforts are appreciated. I can remember back around 2001 or 2 when we were looking at putting
a store in Price. I'm retired and most of the rest of the people who were considering that are as well, for the
best it seems!

Out

Nice coverage and photos. Nice to see this area.
Brian Stevens

You are correct, Rob. That is 1/2 of the rear helper that you see thru the silo. What you see on the right is the switcher used for shuffling cars around at the oil loadout. It is PRLX 3465 and lettered for Savage. Good looking unit. I posted a picture of it on 1/12/14. If you search for savage switcher oil, you will find it. Sorry, I don't know how to post the link.

Dick Ebright

The pic at Utah Rwy. Jct. is excellent.  Thanks for posting the info as well as the pix.

If UP ever wants to shorten the name of their company, I think that graffitti nails it:  "WEST"

BNSF could take a new name from a work of fiction a few years back:  "TRANSCON"

BSB

Dick,

Thanks for not only the photos (which are fine, no apologies needed!) but also for the very informative account of the downturn in Utah oil and gas loadings by rail. Be careful driving Indian Canyon on 191 as it can be very dangerous... Thanks again for sharing your great photos and also what you leader while taking them!

ShastaDaylight

Excellent write up and shots. Atleast there's still a little traffic at Wildcat

   Not even close to looking like a caboose.

I like Pic 1!!

Your Amtrak shot is great; nice scenery!  You picked a good spot.

Andy

Great shots. Thanks for the updates. === === = === JLH

OregonOldGuy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In photo 4, I can see what I assume is the rear DP
> unit through the silo, but waht is off to the
> right.  Looks like a caboose or a switcher.
>  What are we seeing????
>
> Rob

Looks like the cab end of a EMD SW/MP switcher.

The used to have an Alco.

Out

Thanks for the update and pictures.I appreciate the fine narrative.As a side note my father spent 50 years in the "oil patch" with Dresser Atlas.Bill Webb