chasing the tonopah & tidewater

me and Jack had planned to chase down the A&C near cadiz Ca, but our plans changed a bit since we missed the interchange. So with no green and white to shoot we decided to check out the revamped T&T outside of Ludlow. Again, though we missed the BNSF drop off from the "cadiz local" but we got a shot of an older UP boxcar, course Jack got my SUV in the pic

we were about to get back on I-40 into barstow when we heard a horn! I spun the SUV back around and literally went bannanas! it was that ellusive "nuclear train" that T&T ran 3 nights a week it was leaving Ludlow early i fumbled for my digital to get a shot of this elusive train since it ran mostly late at night!

"Well" I tell jack "I got a full tank of gas and my CC is payed off lets go to Beatty for the weekend...the railfan way!" We missed it at Baker but stopped at death valley junction... somewhere in my mess of pics from this weekend I got a good one of the abandoned station. The other red and yellow set of SD-40s was on the siding dropping off tankcars of "domestic water" for, I'm assuming, the power plant out there. Got a decent one of the "yellow terror" as locals call it BUT of course I didn't zoom enough as I was trying to get the whole "cask car"

the hogger in the "canteen local" invited us up into the cab, we shared some gatorade and he mentioned the "ghost train" was making a maiden run. Of course my camera finger wasn't fast enough to get #7 :'(

it was pretty uneventful the rest of the way as we could not catch up to the "YT" which actually stands for Yucca Train (denoting yucca flats at Nellis AFB) BUT we did get to see the Rhyolite local preparing to swap cars with the canteen train. even though Rhyolite is a ghost town (though a quasi tourist attraction) the old station still looks elegant as she did in the '30's

but then a shock! Thinking the "canteen was coming in a bit fast the YT shot by I was lucky i was taking pics of the station (me and my lighning fingers:hehe: )

we roamed around Rhyolite a bit to watch the I/C and chased the "rhylo" back to Beatty Nev where we are now. Jack took this shot of the 38 switching more domestic water cars. Those red and yellow paint scemes sure look gaudy but I guess when you are hauling nuclear waste you wanna be seen! We'll turn in now and probably catch the tourist train to Nellis AFB and the museum there. I'm grabbing the sleeping bags though cuz I definately wanna see the YT (and maybe bribe my way in with my military ID and my camera )

Excellent screenshots and an entertaining read.

T&T chasing pt 2

well we were all set to check into our hotel when the Nellis turn crew went on> i got a butt up my backside and asked the crew if it was ok to tag along the crew was friendly enough to oblige and with much gusto we jumped in the cab of #38 and took a ride to the nellis museum station. Nellis AFB was known in the 1950's for it's atomic bomb tests, guess since the Gov't dropped atomic bombs there the ground was radioactive enough that a little bit of waste won't hurt anyhow we got some shots of the station:

the historic barracks area which I found the national guard still use on occasion:

and the small plane museum so far all they have is a few planes but the caretaker there says he is hoping for a B-36 that mercury-redstone though was a nice touch! Though someone told me there's an unmanned capsule out in the desert nearby...

Jack got this shot of the santa fe water car while I sweet talked the guard at the gate.

Fortunately the CO was there and he ok'ed my pics as long as he could look at them before I left (guess he was a railfan ) A few moments later the 4640 rolled out to pick up the "sludge cars" and some general freight


heres a good shot (finally) of the nuclear waste "cask car"

Jack who refused to go in to the facility got a shot of the YT coupled up to the Beatty local taking the now unneeded coal hoppers probably to Rhyolite

Tonopah & tide water epilouge

Me, on the other hand, got shots of the 4640 dropping off the sludge cars (tank cars loaded with liquified asphalt and a concrete mix) and shoving the boxcars to the class 9 warehouse. The tunnel and the big grader are used to move the casks to its final resting place somewhere in that tunnel in my pics if you look to the right of the second pic a platoon of M-1 tanks are always on standby


After dropping off the boxcars, the GP-10 picked up the two cask cars and ran around em.


For some reason I had to delete the transfer process but I kept the shot of the transfer station


with the sun setting low I headed back to the station to cach the last train to Beatty. When we got there I got shots of T&T #8. The tender is from a long since scrapped UP mountain.

finally we got back to ludlow (decided not to take a hotel in Beatty) and we got lucky again! Gassing up before the 3 hour trip home at Ludlow, Jack suddenly screams "TRAIN!!!" The Yermo local had to pick up some empty cask car setups and was on its way....somewhere. Looks like BNSF pulled an old GE out of retirement for the "new" local. So these last two shots were some cool ones, glad I could share these withyou guys!

I just wanted to say I hope you all enjoyed this story I'll have others later on from my Colorado Midland and (if I have the patience) MY SP baldwin park branch

Verry cool. Where did you get the T&T engines and rolling stock?

I don't know if you noticed or not but the thread is 4 years old and the guy hasn't been active since late last year so i doubt you will get a response.

ah actually I am still around...just the army got in the way

the diesels were done by paint shed the steamer is a photoshop reskin

since those 4 years however, i have been working on a revamped T&T version...to debut soon I hope