About a mile west of Mounds on the Sunnyside Branch, this is the branch line that runs 13 miles from Mounds out to the ECDC trash site in East Carbon City. This exposure was five minutes and lit exclusively by moon light.
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At this lonely grade crossing in the middle of the Utah desert, a cross buck and a stop sign do their best to protect the tracks. Granted, they do their job considering the low number of cars and trains that pass through in a day! The moon shines brightly in the southern sky in the distance.
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In the desert in between Wash and Mounds, the rails reflect the fading light in the western sky. Unfortunately, the rails in the desert are empty far more than they were twenty years ago under the Rio Grande.
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Earlier in the year, one of 5371's number boards was actually stolen right off the unit! Fortunately, the excellent team at Roper (in Salt Lake City) came up with this hand-painted make-shift replacement!
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My favorite characteristic of any Rio Grande tunnel motor (aside from the fact that it is Rio Grande) would have to be the fuel tank. Only the 73 Grande units had slightly shortened fuel tanks, setting them apart from their Espee T-2 brothers.
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This is exactly the way a Rio Grande SD40T-2 should look! A well worn paint scheme, a dirty plow, a well-worn paint scheme, and burned paint beneath the dynamic brake intake.
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Perhaps my best night shot to date, this was a half hour (yep, nearly 30 minutes) exposure taken at the east switch of Mounds. It was taken between 5:30am and 6:00am, although the light behind the signal is not the sun. That is ambient light from the town of Wellington, about ten miles away. Note all the stars swirling around the North Star in the upper right corner of the photo.
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Sitting on one of the engine tracks (along with two Union Pacific SD40-2s), DRGW 5371 - the last unpatched, active Rio Grande unit - awaits its next assignment on the Dirt Train.
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Only the light from the moon reflects off the rails at the east switch of Mounds. A few of the brighter stars can be seen streaking through the night sky as they (or rather, the earth) moves during the duration of the photo.
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This shot is quite intentionally dark as I feel it is more artistic this way. I think the highlighting on 5371 - the last active, unpatched Rio Grande unit as of the time of this photo - just makes the picture perfect.
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Lights in the lower yard at Helper light up DRGW 5371 as it sits idling, awaiting its next duty. The unit will leave Helper in November for a triennial inspection, where it will almost certainly be patched.
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The last unpatched Rio Grande unit left in the world (as of the time of this photo). DRGW 5371 holds down the fort at Helper, assigned as power on the Dirt Train running between Helper and East Carbon City on the Sunnyside branch.
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One of the defining beacons in Denver for the past decade or so has been the so-called Quest building. The word Qwest is on all four sides of the building and at night they are illuminated very brightly in blue! On this Sunday afternoon, UP 1989 and three SD70M's have been fueled and are waiting to head south on the MNYPU, bound for Pueblo, CO.
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After undergoing some repairs at Burnham, UP 1989 is finally taken back to North Yard in preparation to run south on the MNYPU. Last week, UP 1989 suffered a failure which prevent it from "loading", basically meaning that it wouldn't pull.
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UP 1989 joined a variety of rolling stock including a hopper, tank car, gondola, boxcar, and intermodal equipment at Denver Union Terminal. The equipment was here for the Wheels and Motion Transportation Fair, a job fair which took place between 8am and 3pm during the day.
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