Moffat Tunnel Sub pictures posted
To go straight to all the pix, click on the “Moffat Morning Pix” tab or click here.
On Friday the 15th I was to meet up with Max and John for another railfanning day, this time on the Moffat. We were to meet at CO HWY 93 & 72 at 6:30 AM, but my alarm didn’t go off, so I didn’t wake up until after 5:30. I quickly made lunch and left, arriving at Rocky siding right around 7:00. As I was pulling off, I could see the DPUs of a westbound going over the east siding switch. So I turned around and got it at Blue Mountain Road.
After the train went by we all met up right at the crossing (I didn’t get a chance to turn the car on). Max brought a friend with him from Cheyenne, so we enjoyed more company for the day. Once we met up, we headed up the hill to hopefully get the westbound again. HWY 72 just opened in the last couple weeks after being washed out in places from Colorado’s 2013 floods. With that, the speed up the hill was slower than normal and we were stuck behind two rock trucks for most of the way.
We got stopped by the westbound at the crossing at Cliffe, but there was also a BNSF eastbound in the siding. We set up to get it to leave, then realized there was no crew on board. So that delayed us by about 5 minutes and we weren’t able to catch the headend of the westbound again.
As we were getting close to it near Tolland, we heard them call in diverging approach for Tolland, and we knew a meet was set up. We got the eastbound there then continued up the hill.
We didn’t know what else what out and about, so we just set up for Amtrak at a S-curve between Tolland and East Portal siding. After Amtrak went by, we headed down the hill for Cliffe, not knowing what else was on the line. We waited there for awhile, then went to the rock overlook above the east end of the siding and Tunnel 29.
Again, we saw and heard nothing in the amount of time we were there, so we headed down to Crescent siding where we could at least get service. Once we got to Crescent we could faintly pick up some work on the radio, and at that point Christopher made the comment that there was a work curfew, so there wouldn’t be anything else all day. We went down to overlook Big 10 curve and found 3 different groups of work. At this point we decided to call it a day.
On my way home I ran into BNSF’s Longmont Switch backing cars into the yard at Longmont, so I was able to get a few pictures and some video of them switching.
Overall, it was a fun day that could’ve been a little better, but it also could’ve been worse.
To view the video, click here (it’s on the pix page as well).
KO Trains 