Western Railroad Discussion > Trona on Black Friday

Decided to gamble on Trona running on black friday since that was going to be the only weekday off in awhile. Also wanted to get out there before the Tier 4 thingys get there.
The way up there on sierra highway we saw a manifest (Picture1) at Ave B that left a cut there at Felta and then 2 back to back ILTLBs one with an Ex Sp leader (2) and the other with an ACe (3). Then we saw some Mojave light power go to Felta to retrieve that cut.
We saw nothing at Mojave for LOP82 that could be for Trona but we pressed on. We were also behind schedule about 40 minutes because of the whole getting 3 southbound UPs. As we take the 14 out of Mojave I saw LOP53 doing Kemira but with one 3 bay which left me kind of worried that it could be LOP82 but that doesnt do Kemira so no clue why it only had one 3 bay.

The drive out there was very chill with tons of campers and people off roading like atleast 1k people it looked like a lot of fun and dust everywhere.

But we were determined to get Trona, We saw nothing really in Searles just some 3 bays on the broken Lone Pine branch and some on the Trona siding, but there was a reason for that. 
As we got into Trona there was nothing running BUT we did see the gate open so there was hope. We looked around and saw this weird looking genset (4) Idk what it is, also a Caboose (5). We drove all around the plant that we could just to look at it since it was our first time there. We stopped at the general store to get some chesters and heard a frequency that we had no clue what it was for that was extremely static but had to be it. Then in the distance we saw them all the way out in the west end faclity coming from Searles so we race over there.

Finally got to see basically my first Tunnel Motor in action and really first SP painted EMD (6). Crazy to see them in the flesh and not in pictures but they have seen some rough days. Also they were so aggresive with the switching with loud thunderous booms I'll show in a video. It was so funny the sheer power shook the ground and the sound shook your body. Also hearing the cars in the distance crashing closer was honstly fascinating. We watched them for over 2 and a half HOURS switching to hopefully get them at a crossing moving. We almost bailed because lighting and the drive back. Glad we decided to hold out because this was probably my first and last time I'm going to see thoses ancient beasts. They weren't really chugging but they swaying everywhere going 20mph and also most of them looked like they were due for a Turbo tune up because of the amount of smoke coming out.

A day I won't forget.

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Looks like a great chase. All of those locomotives and cars have a “well used” look to them.

Nathan

Posted from iPhone

Here are the 2 videos, I have many more scenes of this. You can see the camera shake every time lol, so violent.

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2nd video

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Ryanfuzzhead Wrote:

> We looked around and saw this weird looking genset

That's the former Metro Ports 3GS21B-DE, acquired in 2008 with Carl Moyer funds to replace one of the SF30C's at their operation in Long Beach.  Guess the contractually-required period of use is up and they sold it off.  Pretty rare for a used NRE genset to find a new operator.  According to this, Trona got it in 2021 to replace ex-SP SD40 7357 as the plant switcher:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/161821043@N02/51091636628

Nice catch. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Wednesday night's train from Searles was tied down south of Westend, and Friday's day crew got on that and did all the work at the Westend plant before going into the Trona plant.

Posted from Android

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ryanfuzzhead Wrote:
>
> > We looked around and saw this weird looking
> genset
>
> That's the former Metro Ports 3GS21B-DE, acquired
> in 2008 with Carl Moyer funds to replace one of
> the SF30C's at their operation in Long Beach. 
> Guess the contractually-required period of use is
> up and they sold it off.  Pretty rare for a used
> NRE genset to find a new operator.  According to
> this, Trona got it in 2021 to replace ex-SP SD40
> 7357 as the plant switcher:
>
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/161821043@N02/510916
> 36628
Nice to know. Thought they were just testing the replacement.

Ryanfuzzhead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...Finally got to see basically my first Tunnel Motor
> in action and really first SP painted EMD (6).
> Crazy to see them in the flesh and not in pictures
> but they have seen some rough days. Also they were
> so aggresive with the switching with loud
> thunderous booms I'll show in a video. It was so
> funny the sheer power shook the ground and the
> sound shook your body. Also hearing the cars in
> the distance crashing closer was honstly
> fascinating. We watched them for over 2 and a half
> HOURS switching to hopefully get them at a
> crossing moving. We almost bailed because lighting
> and the drive back. Glad we decided to hold out
> because this was probably my first and last time
> I'm going to see thoses ancient beasts. They
> weren't really chugging but they swaying
> everywhere going 20mph and also most of them
> looked like they were due for a Turbo tune up
> because of the amount of smoke coming out.
>
> A day I won't forget.

It's the sound that I miss the most.  It's too bad everyone can't go back in a time machine for a day.

mapboy