Railroad photograph
Photo by: Kevin Morgan
As luck would have it, the engineer on the West Local needed to throttle up a notch just as the West Local approached the camera! 10-15 years ago, the West Local would sometimes draw four geeps for power because the train could be 30-50 cars long. This was when Rocky Flats was still in its cleanup phase and Mesa Oil was still located west of Leyden. Now, however, the Rocky Flats cleanup project has long since been completed and Mesa Oil has moved, leaving only the aggregate plant at the north end of the Rocky Spur as the sole customer for the West Local. So why send three units to handle a single car? This same power is used on the South Local, which runs down to Sedalia on the Joint Line on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is easier to just leave the power MU'd together for the trip west on Wednesday's.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 11:54:24
image date



Location Information

City or County and State
Arvada, CO

Subdivision
Moffat Tunnel (UP)

Milepost or Control Point
Chemical (MP 14.5)




Train Information
Railroad
Union Pacific
Model
GP40-2
Primary Unit Number
UP 1534

Paint Scheme
UP Lightning
Symbol
LDB17-25
Train Type
Local

Primary Unit Past Number(s)
ex- SP 7299


Photo Information
Camera Make/Model
Canon / Canon EOS-1D Mark III
ISO
200
Flash
Did Not Fire

Focal Length
24 mm
Shutter
1/500 seconds
Aperture
f/9


(Pre-UP 1534) - Photos of SP 7299

04/19/2005

03/03/2005