Western Railroad Discussion > Flint Hills DT report 3-03a

Upon getting a motivating text from someone “in the know” I decided yesterday it was about time to resume my bi-monthly (give or take) recon trips down to the massive double-track project BNSF has going on in my old Santa Fe stomping grounds. I was told there were crews hard at work getting a new control point *to be named “Ice”* up & running within the Ellinor area. So that’s where I started. But I sure wasn’t prepared from the menagerie of people & vehicles. As usual, on to the captions>>v

1. Looking east from “Old Hwy 50” Rd which parallels the BNSF, nee AT&SF main line right through the major system junction point that is the Ellinor crossover plant. At first sighting from a distance, those 2 cranes looked like a giant praying mantis chomping down on the track… ;^)

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2. 3. & 4. Now looking more southwest than west here are 3 more various scenes from the same road. In Image #3 that’s a water tanker truck soaking down the road to help control the dust from passing vehicles. Besides this nosy railfan, there were 3 other rural resident or agricultural vehicles that passed through the area. And I was there less than 10 minutes total!

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5. I spoke with a young white-hat for a few seconds. He was friendly & polite, but I didn’t learn anything about the project I didn’t already know. I knew through the grapevine there were a couple of westbound trains getting close, so I left the construction site and set up to shoot BNSF 7075 on a manifest at the “X Rd” crossing. It was obviously moving under a slow order so…

6. …I did my best to scoot around the south side of the main line over a minimum maintenance (read: dirt) road. I got a broadside shot over the long drainage-protection trestle. If you look close you’ll see evidence of the 2nd main track trestle between the pilings of the original.

7. I hustled, but couldn’t reach the West Rd crossing it time to shoot the head end again. So here’s an away shot of the DP unit, BNSF 6144. Down below is a staging area for equipment working on the new trestles between west Ellinor & Gladstone. This spot is also known as “Krieger’s Krossing” in honor of a certain retired UP Steam crew member who visited my Flint Hills back in ’13.
(Photos 1-7 taken at Ellinor, KS)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/21 17:22 by santafe199.

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8. I took up temporary residence at the Miller Cemetery crossing at Gladstone, KS for the next train, BNSF 7910 on a unit tanker. This newly built-up flat area is the south side counterpart to the new B/O car set-out track area on the north side.

At this point my fuel tank was gasping for some go-juice and I needed some some kind of a treat myself. By the time I was back from a mad dash over to Casey’s at nearby Cottonwood Falls another westbound train was drifting through the valley:

9. BNSF 7015 was leading a corn-mash “stinky” train to a long easy stop on the main at Bazaar, KS. In a surprise move, BNSF 4010 brought an EB intermodal into the siding. Maybe the original meet was set up for Matfield Green, but the DS decided to bring the 4010 one more notch east. That yellow-red flag is for the work area which will eventually be the new crossover plant called “Orient”.

10. The 7015 was my companion as I drove down KS hwy 177. This westbound train is rolling south as the crow flies, and I’m shooting west across a farm field from the highway. The first car in the train is passing the approach signal to the east siding switch at Matfield Green, KS.

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11. 12. & 13. All of these images were shot from a State of Kansas historical marker with a northeastward view. What was once a typical rolling “Flint Hill” now looks like an ugly strip mine. A BNSF contract company called Sema Construction has been digging up & hauling countless truck loads of ballast & earth-filling material for the project. I would expect that once this whole project has been completed the hill will be reclaimed back to its original appearance as much as possible. In images #12 & #13 I swung my D7100 a bit to the right to capture the 7015 coming out from behind the hill. Over the years this has been one of the best-known spots for shooting Santa Fe/BNSF trains in the Flint Hills. This area is a hair closer to Matfield Green, so that’s what I’ll go with for a location.

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But wait… there’s moooooore…

14. It was a big surprise for me, seeing this overhead signal bridge at soon-to-be-history west Cassoday, KS. In my Santa Fe days there was but a single-masted searchlight signal on the main and a dwarf signal for the siding. But I found out that after the second main track is added, BNSF will continue to use old Cassoday siding as just that: an auxiliary, but fully controlled CTC siding.

There will well over a dozen more images in part #2 of my 3-05 report, so stay tuned…

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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            Cranes are 'Track Hoes".    :)

Lance,
Thanks for posting these. Rail construction projects are always interesting. Maybe that's because there just aren't that many of them. Especially up close and personal like this DT job.
Go

Thanks for the interesting update on the Flint Hills DT work.

Larry

Nice pictures Lance. Thanks for the update on the progress.

Kim Heusel

Like ABO Canyon and other places along the old Santa Fe, changed forever. Progress I guess.
JB

It sort of looked  like the "track Hoes" at Elinor were moving the La Junta Sub away from the Emporia Sub.  Find that curious.  Thanks for making the effort and posting these, Lance.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

> There will well over a dozen more images in part
> #2 of my 3-05 report, so stay tuned…
>
> Thanks for looking!
> Lance Garrels
> santafe199

Part 2 Were waiting its not nice to keep us in suspense!
Oh just go ahead and take your time we wouldn't want you to miss a photo or something Thanks for the report.

For a long time it always looked like Emporia Sub was a branchline coming off the La Junta sub. I heard they changing it to look like La Junta is a branchline !
Changing the track spacing to look that way.

Posted from Android

dpc37 Wrote: > ...  Part 2 ... not nice to keep us in suspense!

(huffin' & puffin') I'm just about through with the photo-editing. Then I hafta write the captions... THEN I hafta try to find the usual 473 typos and other such unpleasantries...

;^)

Lance, can you post map with a dot or the lat/lon of "Ice"? Thanks.

MSE Wrote: > ... can you post map ...

You, who have dealt with digital weather maps for a hundred years assume I'm talented enough to do this. I barely figured out what you meant by lat/lon. I though you misspelled "location". I had a rough, hand-drawn map of the "finished" Ellinor. But it was lost when Yahoo-mail & I got a bitter divorce. I'll NEVER deal those Yahoo SOBs again...

A more proper name these days for a "track hoe" is "excavator."  That is what most of the railroad guys that I know call them now.

MSE Wrote:
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> Lance, can you post map with a dot or the lat/lon
> of "Ice"? Thanks.

It's literally three tenths of a mile west of the current Ellinor crossovers.

38.395215, -96.421793