Western Railroad Discussion > A Beautiful Flagstaff Morning

A great August 2025 morning, early enough that commute traffic hasn't even appeared yet.  A couple of BNSF EBs back to back - seemed to me that if you saw one in a direction, at least one (or a couple) more followed.  Don't know if that is crew calling fleeting at Needles or Winslow, or if that was just an impression I had that doesn't actually work out that way usually.  Whatever the reason, I sure appreciated it with limited time around the tracks. I've got a couple more from Flag that I'll be posting over the next couple of days, that reinforced my fleeting assumption.

Had to speed up parts of the second train to meet the 6 minute restriction - the entire train has been included for those that keep track of length and type of freight.  Thanks for following along!  

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Nice video.  I always love spending time in Flagstaff.  A previous discussion pointed out the lack of a sidewalk gate in the video of the first train due to San Francisco St being one way for autos in the opposite direction.  I do think they need to put one there because that's the direction the college kids walk back to campus after drinking in the downtown bars.  I also just read that they plan to build two pedestrian tunnels under the tracks next year at two locations downtown.

I assume that crossing is a whistle-free zone.  I like those, but I wonder how locomotive engineers feel about them.  Also, I really liked the shot where the train's passage was sped up.  I called it "BNSF Acela Intermodal."

Yes it's a quiet zone, and yes there have been accidents and fatalaties.     
Campus on one side, Lumberyard brewery on the other.  
What's even worse is an local dare referred to as 'train slapping', to stand close enough to the crossing to slap the train as it passes, with video.

When I was there in '94 it was an experience to see an uphill (west) train approach, as soon as both crossing gates dropped you' get a 'Run 8' for the grade uphill at the same time the horns were tied down, and it shook the ground at the station so hard that car alarms went off.   Great thing as a railfan, hell as a resident.

Last year, in preparation/anticipation of my trip to the Seligman Sub, I tracked train movements between the four webcams covering the sub for two weeks.  Eastbounds would arrive at Needles in a fairly steady fashion during the early morning hours, with many manifests going in to the yard.  The trains would accumulate, until a few were there, and then depart on 25-30 minute intervals in a fleet.  There would be some effort to get the Z/Q trains out in front of the slow manifest and marine stack trains, but by the time the fleets would reach Kingman 120-150 minutes later, the slower trains would have been already overtaken.  The westbounds out of Winslow seemed to depart in a much more random fashion.

I'm not sure if it's sharp dispatching, or movement planner & trip optimizer at work, but most of the overtakes that I witnessed were done with almost clockwork efficiency.

Hopefully that shines some light on the ops patterns behind your question.



HomerBedloe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A great August 2025 morning, early enough that
> commute traffic hasn't even appeared yet.  A
> couple of BNSF EBs back to back - seemed to me
> that if you saw one in a direction, at least one
> (or a couple) more followed.  Don't know if that
> is crew calling fleeting at Needles or Winslow, or
> if that was just an impression I had that doesn't
> actually work out that way usually.  Whatever the
> reason, I sure appreciated it with limited time
> around the tracks. I've got a couple more from
> Flag that I'll be posting over the next couple of
> days, that reinforced my fleeting assumption.
 

HomerBedloe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A great August 2025 morning, early enough that
> commute traffic hasn't even appeared yet.  A
> couple of BNSF EBs back to back - seemed to me
> that if you saw one in a direction, at least one
> (or a couple) more followed.  Don't know if that
> is crew calling fleeting at Needles or Winslow, or
> if that was just an impression I had that doesn't
> actually work out that way usually.  Whatever the
> reason, I sure appreciated it with limited time
> around the tracks. I've got a couple more from
> Flag that I'll be posting over the next couple of
> days, that reinforced my fleeting assumption.
>

It's essentially uphill both ways to Flagstaff, so better horsepower trains "catch up" to the lesser horsepower trains, often resulting in the "fleets" in one direction or another.   

It has been 20 years since I left Arizona, but here is what I remember of Flagstaff.  The Santa Fe would time their trains to coordinate with the arrivals and departures of ships at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.  From Friday thru Monday, between around 5:00 AM to Noon came the parade of eastbound trains.  Afternoons were pretty quiet.  Then around 6:00 PM came the parade of westbound trains.  It pretty much continued until around 1:00 or 2:00 AM.  Tuesday thru Thursday things were pretty quiet.

I remember one Saturday night while staying at the La Posada I was awakened around 2:00 AM.  The reason?  It was too quiet.  There were no trains.  

In 2021 I had a chance to visit Flagstaff once again.  I was taking a trip on the Tioga Pass and had the day to spend in Flag.  The operating patterns hadn't changed much.  

 

My experience when I was there was definitely EBs in the morning, starting around 6 am until 9 am (the vid features two of them - an earlier vid featured another early morning EB).  But there were also a few WBs early - I'll post one later this week.  The WBs were more prominent in the pm, but they seemed to start around 2pm and continue through dinner time.  There was also a couple of EB manifests during this same window (again, I have videos of this pattern).  Dinner time (5 pm to 7 pm) there was a good mix of EB and WB (Lumberyard video and another I'll post later).  At night, I could hear trains (we stayed across 66 from the tracks), but I didn't pay any attention to EB or WB, and when you're mostly asleep, it is hard to distinguish whether the train is pulling or coasting (at least it was hard for me...oh wait, I didn't really care!).  

The one thing I will say is that each day I got to spend some time by the tracks, I was never shut out.  Usually there for a 1 to 2 hour window, and near as I can remember, I saw at least 3 trains each time (some times as many as 6).  I was very impressed with the frequency - when I worked for ATSF in Winslow, covering for the roadmasters in Kingman, Flag, Winslow and Gallup, the railroad was running about 30/day max.  The 60 to 80 number now seems to be a reasonable estimate, and that made hanging out trackside a pleasure!