The fastest I have seen trains go on this part of the railroad is 50 mph. 45 is closer to the mark according to my stop watch. But then we are mostly coal drags up here, the faster stuff goes through Minot.
But we have a major grain terminal at Gladstone, with ground being turned for another at Hebron.
We have the Ethanol Plant here in Richardton (they lease two locomotives) and now crude oil is coming on to the railroad.
Coal goes East, Ethanol goes west, Grain goes both east (to MLPS) and west (to SEA-TAC), Oil appears to go west, I never see any oil cans in front of our place, only the Ethanol cars.
Corn comes into the Ethanol plant by both rail and road, Brewer's Yeast mostly goes out by truck, although dry brewer's yeast does go out by rail. Our ethanol plant is coal fired, they were supposed to get their coal by truck from a mine about 40 miles to the north of us, but the engineer did not do his sums right, or so we are told, and the lower quality local coal does not work well for them, so they also bring MT/WY coal in by train.
They seem to have added another mile of track just to handle the coal cars. But they still truck the coal from this coal pile to their boilers about a 1/4 mile away. Maybe a conveyor is in their future. I have heard that they are ready do do some more expansion on the plant.
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Broadway Lion, said in part:
[snip]"...This was a mixed train mostly tank cars but also with grain cars. Unlike coal cars, you can never tell if these are loaded or empty.." [snip]
Lion we see any number of these configurations around here. Their frequency seems to be growing in numbers. There is the usual grain worms ( empty and loaded) Empty shuttles usually running back utilize their single unit running on the head end, and two units in DPU on the rear. Loaded the two units lead,and the DPU single on the rear. Most of the eastbound stackers run 3 or 4 units on the head end. While westbounds will run two units in DPU and 3 units on the head end. Speed around here is generally pretty fast with track max at 70 mph, some days they seem to be at that and some days they can get pretty slow. n( this is Southern Transcon between Mulvane, and Wellington,Ks (crew change)
LION goes out for a walk after lunch. Him walks west along the Russian Ridge to Highway 8, then south to Old Highway 10, then then along the ditch north of the highway back to the Abbey. It is a mile and a half, and takes about 45 minutes. I have a radio with me, and a head set, and I listen to some nice conservative talk radio.
Well, OK, the BNSF mane lion (NP) follows old highway 10 through town, and while we see as many as 20 trains a day, it is seldom with a camera in hand. Today was no exception as I approached the intersection of Hwys 8 and 10. But I heard the train , and turned to look. This one had nine locomotives on the point (I believe that is the limit unless others are dead in tow further back in the train. Clearly they were moving motive power from east to west. Usually trains past our place are either unit coal trains (eastbound) or unit hopper trains (westbound) which usually have two locomotives on the point and one on the rear.
This was a mixed train mostly tank cars but also with grain cars. Unlike coal cars, you can never tell if these are loaded or empty. I suppose if I were closer to the tracks I could tell by looking at the truck springs. Until recently all of our trains were coal with occasional grain trains. But now with an Ethanol plant in town and with increased traffic from the Bakken, we are seeing more tank cars. New crude loading terminals have gone up in Dickinson, and another further north, perhaps on the old GN main.
Trains on our line are slower trains, none of the inter-modal stuff down here: That runs on the old GN through Minot which hosts faster speeds.
ROAR
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