Western Railroad Discussion > Moving Dirt out of San Francisco

After several months of infrequent carloadings the volume of non-hazerdous dirt destined for disposal in Utah has picked up considerably out of the Pier 96 terminal at the Port of San Francisco. Recent days have seen 15-20 carloads a day out of the port and this should continue for some time boosting the carloads on the South San Francisco Switcher and the Mission Bay Turn to San Jose.

The South City job with UP1204-UP2528 is seen creeping onto Quint St. with 30 empties bound for loading at the port.

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The South City switcher snakes through the S-curve on Quint with empty gons for the port. Cleared the car on the right by less than a foot--a regular occurance on this trackage.

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This set of track has been out of service for almost a month before it was repaired again.

About what time do they work?

The bulk of the fleet for this traffic is made up of ECXX gons in the 98000 series(for East Carbon Developement Corp.). These are supplemented by UP 97000 series coal service gons. The material is pretty dense(includes concrete chunks) and only fills 2/3 of the cars' cubic capacity. ECXX98050 is at SSF.

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Wednesday evening's Mission Bay with UP5003-UP3596 was a lighter than normal 21 cars but 16 of them were dirt loads.

Regarding Dan's question, I'm not familiar with exact calls but the SSF switcher heads for the City about 09:00 to 10:00 and the Mission Bay heads south from SSF 19:00 to 20:00, weekdays only.

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shed47 Wrote:
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> The bulk of the fleet for this traffic is made up
> of ECXX gons in the 98000 series(for East Carbon
> Developement Corp.). These are supplemented by UP
> 97000 series coal service gons. The material is
> pretty dense(includes concrete chunks) and only
> fills 2/3 of the cars' cubic capacity. ECXX98050
> is at SSF.


Interesting. ECXX also has a fleet of 89-foot flatcars (in the low 20000-series range) carrying trash containers along the eastern seaboard - usually in CSX trash trains between NY/NJ and VA/SC. These are often mixed in with AWXX flatcars. Apparently, ECXX is doing good business hauling waste materials in both halfs of the USA.

On duty 7 AM M-F, They swith SSF until about 930 before heading into SF

Again great pictures of local operations, Shed. Glad there is still alittle work in SF.

Roger
MSVRR @ MP115 UP Coast Sub

is UP 1204 an ex KCC GP39-2? those number boards look kinda odd on it.

Shed47 ... thanks for the photo of the Mission Bay. I was in west Millbrae (at the BART tunnel entrance) at 1930 last night when the UP 5003 rolled south. I didn't have a chance to get a photo.

When I saw the dirt train reach East Carbon's site, I was surprised that there were 3 diffferent kinds of car, includiong the ones from SF and the East Coast ones...glad to make the connection finally....

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If this dirt is non-hazardous, why does is it shipped all the way to Utah? Seems like it could be used for roadbuilding, etc. somewhere local.

It's muddy dirt, kinda like a sludge mix that I've seen in some cars.


hotrail Wrote:
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> If this dirt is non-hazardous, why does is it
> shipped all the way to Utah? Seems like it could
> be used for roadbuilding, etc. somewhere local.

hotrail Wrote:
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> If this dirt is non-hazardous, why does is it
> shipped all the way to Utah? Seems like it could
> be used for roadbuilding, etc. somewhere local.

The rules for handling certain materials are too complex to be understood by us mere mortals. For example the water seeping into the south end of the Alameda Corridor from the Slough and local water table is too contaminated to be pumped back to the slough whence it came. (And in the original legislation in Massachusetts, that was used to develop Prop 65 Warning here in CA, both common table salt and sugar were "toxic" enough by definition to be be designated hazardous materials. Although common sense prevailed in those examples, apparently it isn't happening here.)

In any case, we are blessed by the powers that be in that they apparently care enough to pay for it to be shipped to Utah and to allow us to have yet some enduring (or at least temporary) rail traffic in the City.