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Aspen to Leadville

Woke up early on the 18th, after a fairly broken sleep (probably too worried about porcupines and bears!) and packed up camp. Headed back up the road to East Portal; sounds fancy but really it's just the eastern parking lot of Maroon Bells forest park. Went for a walk up there, more amazing scenery. The aspens were really starting to come into colour.

After that we hit the road, back through Aspen and it's road works, then out onto highway 82 and over Independence Pass. What a drive! What a pass. It's only open during the summer, and closes pretty much as soon as first big snow of winter hits. Here we are driving up one of the narrow sections, barely wide enough for two vehicles (vee-hickles as they say) to pass. And here in the States, roads this narrow are as rare as $2 bills.

 

Glenwood Springs to Aspen

Firmly in Colorado now, and boy has Fall hit here! The aspens are turning more and more golden with every passing minute. We decided to head up the hill to Aspen, home of the rich and famous. Before that though I had some scoping to do on the other side of the river; had seen something I had to investigate. Eventually got over there (Glenwood Springs have roadworks in all the most inconvenient places) and found this:

Was fairly excited to see an old Chicago and North Western loco at the front of the LUGO (laid up, good order) queue. These locos are all locos which are in good order, but are stored pending a rise in the economy. Also saw a few ex Southern Pacific locos there too which was good. Then it was back on the road to Aspen…

Was an ok drive, basically just highway that jumps between 35 and 65mph often with no pattern or warning. The further up the mountain we went, the fancier the houses. I was confused as to why...

Moab to Glenwood Springs

It's goodbye Utah, hello Colorado time! So we headed out of Moab and hit the highway for Green River. Soon we were cruising along Interstate 70; all things considered not a bad interstate. It's much quieter than the I80, and doesn't have those **** head high barriers on both sides preventing you seeing any scenery, and it was quiet.

Many moons ago I remembered stumbling across a ghost town out this way, so I was curious if I could find it. My maps weren't much help, but I remembered it being around Cisco, UT. So I pulled onto the old highway when I saw a sign for Cisco, with the intention that I'd stop there and ask if there were any ghost towns around. Haha. This is what greeted me at Cisco:

Think I've found my ghost town! We weren't the only ones here gawking at the town; another car stopped and asked us what on earth had happened here. To expand a bit… the whole "town" of Cisco looks like some kind of junk yard. Ther...

Arches National Park

Big event for the 15th was Arches National Park. We packed up the tent, hopped in the car and trundled over there. Drove past the US Dept of Energy UMTRA project site (a 19 year uranium mining clean up project) and into Arches. Even from the visitors centre the view is impressive:

We then drove up a fairly steep access road to the park itself. Part way up there is an info board illustrating the tectonic plate movements that created the valley.

  Note how the section in front of the road slopes under the section aft of the road. Pretty impressive.

From the same vantage point I could make out an UMTRA train, which ships the uranium mine tailings from the old mine site between two national parks, and the disposal cell at Green River. The containers are all special US DOE nuclear approved ones. The scale of the project is amazing; two loaded trains of containers every weekday until 2019. ...

Helper - Part 3

14th Sept – Goodbye Helper

With a heavy heart I left Helper on the 14th. Had seen a nine loco BNSF train come roaring into town earlier with an SD70ACe on the front and a very loud horn. We stopped in at Price to do some shopping and meanwhile they completed their recrewing or whatever and departed. As we sped across the desert (yup, more desert!) I spied them in the distance and soon we were slowly overtaking them. Shortly after we went our different routes.

  Typical Utah desert scenery. Note the storm building in the distance.

A while later I pulled over to get a breather and by a fluke (honest!) we were right next to a little access road to the Vista siding. I spied a train of hoppers being stored there and so went to have a look. While poking around I saw a tiny black...

Helper – Part 2

13th Sept – Soldier Summit

Was up early on the 13th to go train hunting. Nothing happening at Helper Depot, and Utah Railway looked quiet too. Headed up to Wildcat loadout to check for any trains there, but nothing their either. Not looking good. Drove up to Soldier Summit and endured the perpetual US-6 road works. Was only waiting at Soldier Summit for a few minutes before a BNSF manifest (assorted freight) showed up headed by 3 locos.

  Three BNSF locos roar up to the crest of Soldier Summit on a dreary Sunday.

 

  Emerging from one of the twin tunnels on between Soldier Summit and Helper.

Followed this train down, but just as we approached Helper it crossed a Union Pacific manifest heading back up the hill! I chased this back up to Castle Gate where it was passed by a train of Herzog hoppers full of ballast; mountain railr...

Helper – Part 1

This is why I love Helper; view from the motel :-)

I'm in Colorado now, but first I'll write about Helper. We spent three nights here, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Our motel is just off the highway, US-6, nestled between the Price River and the ex D&RGW railroad mainline. We arrived here and had a little trouble finding the owner, but once we found him he was pretty helpful. He put us in the corner room, which though rough was good enough. The pillows were a little tired looking so we used our own. But we had a kitchen, a fridge, toilet, shower, TV, and a bed, obviously. I could only get internet if I put my laptop on the TV, which was a bit annoying. The next morning I talked to Mark, the owner, and it was absolutely no problem at all to move us. Our new room was really nice; we had a little couch, a dining table, a microwave, a radio/kitchen light (handy), and so on. Best of all, I could sit outside the room and watch the trains go by.

Huntsville to Helper

After camping the night in Huntsville, we woke up early and gave the car a good clean out before heading off for our next adventure. We decided to steer clear of SLC and it's insane freeway system, and instead stick to the back roads (which are still miles better than any NZ highway). We drove from Huntsville to Mountain Green, where we followed the old highway for a bit. Then I spied a train overtaking us and suddenly my passionate hatred of the Interstate system evaporated and in a few moments we were whizzing along the I80 towards Echo, paralleling the trains. We'd soon overtaken mr train (a unit coal train) but then I spied another in the distance and soon enough a double-stacker (containers stacked two-high on well deck container wagons) whizzed by. I snapped off a few shots where I could of my coal train. It was a fair length with a Union Pacific and Southern Pacific loco on the front, and the same combination on the rear in DPU mode (distributed power mode, i.e. remote contr...

Goodbye Salt Lake, hello Ogden

We woke bright and early on the 10th (not hard with UTA's damn noisy busses roaring past our heads!) and were soon on our way to Ogden. Why Ogden? Well there is a certain museum there that made it worthwhile fighting the interstate to get there. Almost saw one accident happen next to me when the car braked suddenly and the following car starting fishtailing as it tried to brake too.

Anyway the museum had something a little bit special for me…

This, ladies and gentlemen, is D&RGW 5371, the last tunnel motor in the original RIo Grande colour scheme. So..? Well the Rio Grande is my favourite of the American railroads, for a number of reasons. 1) Their slogan was "the action road " and when it came to crossing the Rockies or Sierras, their philosophy was to chuck more locos on the front, mid, and rear of the train until it started moving. So 15 locos on one train was common. And fifteen locos slogging their guts out up ...

Central Salt Lake City

The first thing anyone thinks of when they hear "Salt Lake City" is of course Mormons and/or their temple. So I felt it was only right we go visit it. Luckily there was a free shuttle from our campground to Temple Square so we took that. I was worried the tours would cost money, but everything was free there… soon became clear why.

The shuttle bus is run by the church, and when we arrived they showed us the way to our tour guides, who were also of the Mormon church. The guides were all females, 21-24 years old, and always in pairs. Turns out this is part of their "mission" work. The young males go off to distant places to door knock, and the females, it appears, are turned into tour guides.

We were given a fairly quick tour of their extensive campus. One of the people in our group was determined to pick a fight with them and had done his homework on every little flaw in their religion (which honestly isn't hard…) but came across as a bit of a rude prat...