Western Railroad Discussion > Black Mesa & Lake Powell status update please!

Thanks for all info!

Running 24 hours a day and on weekends so easy to catch before the shutdown.

When is the projected shutdown date?

mococomike Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Running 24 hours a day and on weekends so easy to
> catch before the shutdown.

brc600 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When is the projected shutdown date?
>

August or September. 

I just chased it on Monday 05/13 from the plant to the mine/silo and back. Very friendly employees, far easier to chase than I was lead to believe.

You absolutely want to scout your shots before trying to chase the train. They move along pretty good; paced the loads at 50mph along 160 near Shonto.

According to employees we spoke to, the mine is closing in July and the railroad will finish hauling from the stockpile in late August. Until then, trains will keep running as normal.

We arrived at the plant just before 0800 and the train was just finished dumping. They killed the headlight and we started worrying.

We stopped at the office and they vaguely told us trains were running that day so we set out to explore the line. We encountered an MOW crew near Kaibita and they said "train is leaving in 30 min". So we went back to the plant and arrived just as the train was leaving.

In all, the round trip took about 7 hours and we were fighting sun angles all day. It was absolutely worth the thousand mile detour coming home from Ogden!

One last note, they use encrypted digital radio so don't expect to hear them BUT, they do have an EOT (rear end device) so tuning to 452.935 and 457.937 will really help you know when the train is coming because you certainly won't hear it...

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/19 10:27 by shortlineer.

We were there (Page) about a month ago(Appril 12) and the train was operating once per day.My only shot of the day is below.Only one of the three generating units was operating as seen in the image.I don't know if there is any correlation between the number of units operating and the mine runs or not ,but this is all I got.We will be through there in a couple of weeks to go to the Grandkids wedding, so hopefully my luck will change.Bill Webb

---