Day 11: Powder River Basin

Well it's currently -21°C here in Billings Montana, but this story is about the Powder River Basin, one of the busiest railroad sites in America. I started off from Rawlins by checking out the local rail yard. Was rewarded with 3 trains in as many minutes. This seems to be a refuelling point as the trains would come in, stop for a bit, then continue till the DPU was at the fueling station, stop for a bit, then continue on their way. I saw a train of auto-racks, a grain train, and a local doing some switching.

Passed by the local horse HQ, and on the way out of town there was some very weird and distinctive looking rock faces.

Soon I passing through Casper, WY. A pleasant town, although no railway so no use to me. They had cool street names though: Fox, Otter, Mink, Bobcat and so on. Note, not Fox Rd, but just plain Fox. So your mail would be addressed to: Joe Sixpack, 2 Fox, Casper, WY.

The scenery out here sure is empty. The snow wasn't especially deep, and I imagine what snow did fall would be blown away very quickly. There were big wooden "fences" near the highway to catch all the drifting snow. In places it was hard to open the car door, the wind was that strong.

Four hours later I was in the Powder River Basin, driving up highway 59. Now where are all the trains? Then I spotted one:

Soon he was crossing over the highway. I saw a lot of… I think they're oil pumps, not sure of the technical name. But they were everywhere here, and also around Helper, UT. I guess where you get coal you get oil?

I continued up the road and found another spot where train #1 crossed train #2. Here you can see train #2 and the immaculate track work, signals, etc. The money here is phenomenal.

As an example of the amount of money here, take a look at this switch. It has gas heating to keep it clear of ice and snow in the winter, and it has not just moving switch blades, but also a moving frog (with its own heater), so that there is no clunk-clunk as each wheel crosses over the frog. It even has extra linkages to move the switch blades in two places for extra fine control. No doubt a very expensive piece of track work.

Oh, and notice that there are three main lines.

While admiring the track work train #3 came by. That's 3 trains in 35 minutes… it could be more trains, I actually lost count by the end of the day.

It was extremely cold out here; temp was around freezing point, and there was a very strong wind blowing. My new jacket came in handy, however I soon found that it isn't my torso that feels the cold; it's my hands, nose and ears. Here are some more trains. Notice all the signals and propane tanks for the switch heaters.

Here are two trains crossing on the quad main lines. Yes. FOUR main lines here. Not sidings or crossing loops, but actual main lines. That is how many trains use this section of line.

Here is are some more coal trains:

 

I went up and visited Antelope mine, a huge open cast mine. The BNSF load many trains here, and I could see 3 trains in the process of being loaded or waiting to be loaded. I could also see a bit of the mine with the giant trucks digging machine thing.

I went up the road to a crossing and found a nice spot for a photo. And then… yup, the dreaded Murphey's Law set in. Here I am, busiest spot in the West, and do you think any trains would show up!? No… I waited a good half hour before one arrived.

I was starting to feel a little let down by the Powder River Basin, I mean waiting half an hour? I thought there was supposed to be a train every 5 minutes! Well, 5 minutes later I got another train:

… for some reason they'd left the cab door open. Why!? It was freezing outside, literally. Surely they must have been noticing the draft upstairs!? This guy crawled across the crossing, and so imagine my surprise when 2 minutes later this guy came roaring onto the scene and left #1 in the dust!

To be fair #1 was fully loaded and #2 was empty. They use very modern high horsepower AC locos here. AC locos have the advantage that you can load them down to the point that they're crawling along at walking pace at full power for hours at a time; try that with a DC loco and you'll be left with a pile of molten traction motors. The disadvantage of AC locos is they cost significantly more. So here in the Powder River Basin where speed isn't as important as overall throughput, you find AC locos exclusively, with just enough horsepower to keep the trains moving. Hence why there are 3-4 main lines; so you can have 3 loaded trains slogging away, and a fourth line for empties to zoom back to the mines.

By now the sun was setting, so I continued on my way to Gilette.

I got a bit lost in Gilette and came across a monstrous billowing factory of some kind. Probably a power plant, but I'm just guessing.

I continued on into the night and eventually arrived in Spearfish, North Dakota. Another 400 miles driven, about 7 hours behind the wheel. Stayed in the Rodeway Inn here, much cheaper at $43 a night. That kind of price I can handle, and was a nicely appointed room too, though I honestly don't remember what it looked like. So the Powder River Basin didn't disappoint at all, in fact I lost count of the number of trains I saw; was easily 20+, and that was without even trying!