The Union Pacific Railroad's
Potash Local Train
In mid-October 2011, I drove U.S. Highway 191 North, from Moab towards Crescent Junction. About half a mile south of Utah Highway 313
(to Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park), I saw
the unmistakable glare of locomotive headlights, heading south toward
Moab and Potash, Utah.
With two powerful headlights lights stacked above and two more spread
out below, their brightness on the landscape was second only to the
light of the sun.
Across
from the Bar-M Chuckwagon site, U.S. 191 intersected a gravel road
leading west. As soon as I turned on to that road, I found an
uncontrolled railroad grade crossing only a few yards away. Parking my
truck, I grabbed my camera and ran toward the tracks. When I looked
again at the approaching engine, it appeared stopped in a road cut,
north of Highway 313. Had time stood still, was the train stopped on the
tracks or was it moving too slowly for me to see?Soon, I could see that the locomotive was
accelerating toward me on level ground. From that distance, I knew that
my old Sony digital camera would not show much detail. Impatiently, I
waited for the train to approach. As it closed on my position, I started
taking snapshots of the action. While composing my shots on the LCD
screen, I did not realize how quickly the train approached.
Watch the video, "The Union Pacific Potash Local"
When I walked across the tracks to get a different
perspective, I heard a deafening blast from the Union Pacific
locomotive's air horn. The engineer seemed to be saying, “Watch out.
Here I come”. With a five-second delay for image processing, I had to
wait for each shot to clear before I could again depress the shutter. As
the lead engine passed my position, I swung the camera up to capture
the power and size of the Potash Local.
From earthquakes to hurricanes and tornadoes, eye witnesses will
invariable say, “It sounded like a freight train coming towards me”.
After standing my ground just yards from the passing engines, I
understood exactly what they meant.
With
a clickety-clack on the joints of the hand-laid tracks, the Potash
Local soon traveled around a bend and out of sight. In a few more miles,
it would pass the “Train of Pain”,
parked on a siding overlooking the Moab UMTRA Site. The Train of Pain
hauls radio nucleotide-contaminated soil thirty miles from the Moab Pile to a disposal site near Brendel, Utah. After passing through the Moab Rim
within the mile-long Bootlegger Tunnel, the Potash Local enters a road
cut that bisects many layers of solid rock. After emerging from those
two engineering marvels, the tracks then parallel Utah Highway 279 (The Potash Road). Downstream, along the scenic Colorado River,
the destination of the Potash Local is only a few more miles ahead. The
end of the line and terminus of the Cane Creek Subdivision (Potash
Branch line) is the Intrepid Potash Cane Creek Plant.
Email James McGillis
Email James McGillisBy James McGillis at 11:24 PM | | Comments (0) | Link
