Southwest Trip - 7

Hi, We began our day with a return to the Copper Basin.  We expected to follow a northbound empty train to the mine and then a southbound loaded train back to the dumper before heading to Kingman, AZ to spend some time on BNSF's Transcon.  However, when we saw no train at the dumper we checked in at the railroad's office and learned that a problem at the mine caused the trains to run late and that a loaded ore train was getting close to Hayden.

We headed north and intercepted the train just south of Kearny.

We got our second southbound shot as the train approached the dumper in Hayden with a massive tailings pile to the left of the train.

After the train passed a set of light power came down from the engine terminal.  This power tied on to the north end of the train for the run back to the mine.  Thus a crew change was accomplished.

The pipe to the left of the train carries tailings to the pile.  The train is waiting to enter the dumper.

We set up between Hayden and Kearny for a photo of the ore empties.

The train had to wait for a track crew to clear the track and we got 2 more shots in the Ray Junction area before heading for Kingman.

As we followed the BNSF tracks west out of Phoenix we came across this auto rack train just beginning to move east at Sun City, AZ.  Needless to say seeing a pure ATSF set was a big surprise.  An even greater surprise would come in Kingman where we would see 2 more pure sets, one of which we would get to photograph the next day.

We arrived in Kingman, checked into our motel and headed for Old Route 66 through Kingman Canyon.   The next 5 photos were taken from the same location.  The first 2 are of westbound trains.

The second train above had a pair of DPUs.

Next up was a stack train with 8 units.  This just had to be a power transfer we thought.

We then shifted our location about a half mile west where the next 2 trains were photographed.

At this point it became cloudy so we decided to make sure we could get into Crozier Canyon in preparation for the next morning's photography.  After we had finished exploring we got this westbound exiting Crozier Canyon in the last sunlight of the day.

I hope you enjoyed the photos.