I had the opportunity to visit the Glamis area over the New Years holiday and photographed a little of the area. The Glamis area has been a big attraction for all sorts of sand sports riding for many years and has been the site of a siding on the Sunset Route since there was track laid. The Mesquite Regional Landfill will be the final destination of the trash trains orginating at the The Puente Hills Intermodal Facility (PHIMF). Starting at the grade crossing at Hwy.78
Moving to the west. The west end of the Glamis siding. Notice to the left the Mesquite Regional Landfill track branching off towards the facility.
Now about 150 yards further to the west, the switch for the branch to the landfill. Notice that this switch has a Movable Point Frog. I also noticed that both the Mesquite switch and the west end of the Glamis siding have the same number CP SP697 MESQUITE.
The Mesquite Regional Landfill spur is approximately 5 miles long and has a few desert grade crossings. Starting at Milepost 0 looking west.
Milepost 1
Milepost 2
Milepost 3 CP SP003 MESQUITE LANDFILL
This is as far as I traveled up the spur on this trip. The spur continues on for at least another 2 miles where the the trains will unload the trash and return to PHIMF. The pole and antenna prompt me to believe that when this spur becomes active it will be CTC controled.
I also just want to thank KP publically for all his updates on the Sunset Route double tracking project and look forward to his continued posts.
Activating the link to your fine photo gallery:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113679047822618648407/Glamis
The above URLs are all identical, so I couldn't choose individual pics.
The photos confirm an oddity that I noticed on Google Maps - the new grading (presumably for the second main) is on the north ROW side. Will the landfill turnout have to move in the near future?
Map link plug: In this post Glamis refers to a station on the UP Yuma subdivision, not the Scottish castle.
Links to my Google Maps ---> Sunset Route overview, SoCal metro, Yuma sub, Gila sub, SR east of Tucson, BNSF Northern Transcon and Southern Transcon *** Why you should support Ukraine! ***
Looks like they're planning on filling up the old mines there. Should be quite the operation.
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Thanks for activating the link. I am going to setup a photobucket account and re-post with a good link to the photos. To answer your question, I think that the reason that there are 2 trackside signaling boxes with the same CP number about 150 yards apart is that when the double tracking is completed through the area that the current Glamis west end switch will become the one and only CP SP697 MESQUITE with both tracks shifting north around that area and the other CP box and switch disappearing. This is what I am guessing will happen and I look forward to seeing what happen.
http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/a536/dhanson1961/Glamis/PalmSprings2012078_zpsbe932485.jpg
Hey dhanson1961:
It looked like you were posting EACH individual photo's URL one post at a time, then figured out how to use the yellowish-greenish button.
You can have text and a number of photos in each post. You can also edit a post already posted, with the yellowing pencil button on the lower left (when signed in).
I went through the photos MikeF90 URL'ed for you, and they looked great.
Best,
K.P.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- K.P.’s absolute “theorem” from early, early childhood that he has seen over and over and over again: Those that CAUSE a problem in the first place will act the most violently if questioned or exposed.
tree68 Looks like they're planning on filling up the old mines there. Should be quite the operation.
How many mines are down there now? Does anyone know?
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
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Plug the lat/lon (N 33.02612 W 115.01061) into http://mapper.acme.com/ and you'll see the unloading area (I think). Widening your view will show you the extent of apparent excavations in the area. Click on the "Topo" button on the top and you'll see a number of mines labelled. What was mined I don't know.
Landfills such as this sometimes dig down to create a pit. If the pits were already there, that's that much less digging they had to do.
On the trackage - it's interesting that they came right off the main, instead of off the siding. Apparently the trash trains will roll directly into the landfill area. I'm guessing that there will be one or two (or more) dedicated trainsets.
tree68 What was mined I don't know.
What was mined I don't know.
Gold. That's been going on for nearly 30 years there. Highway 78 used to go straight through where the mine pits are and had to be rerouted around the area to the south to enable the mining.
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