Summer Madness
Image by Leo Blackwelder
With any photography trip, there’s always something that doesn’t quite go according to plan. For us on the Deseret, we were not immune to this. Maintenance of way by the power plant killed our planned shot, so we wound up with a mediocre one near there. Safe to say, none of us were terribly happy about this. Now, the thing about Deseret is that it’s not a long railroad, and the roads are definitely not convenient to chase it. You’d be hard pressed to actually pull off any such chase.
Somehow, we managed it. It was a close thing, but we pulled up to the crossing that, had we ignored the no trespassing signs, would lead us to the loadout with little more than a minute to spare. Conveniently, a small hill was right beside the road which gave us the necessary elevation to get what we wanted. Considering how last-minute this was, we were fairly pleased with it.
DPRs E60s are incredibly neat. They roster four active E60C-2s with three more in reserve, mostly for parts. Trains typically run with just three of the four active units. Our trains were ran with units 1, 3, and 4. DPR 1 and DPR 2 (sat back at the loadout) were the units originally built for the Deseret Western back in about 1983. Interestingly, they hold different paint jobs compared to the others, with DPR 1 getting black around both cab windows, and DPR 2 with the same but only for one cab. 3 and 4, plus the spare 3 parts units, all come from the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, or the NdeM. NdeM electrified a rail line down in Mexico and ordered 39 E60C-2s, however the line only operated electrically for a few years, with many of the units never being run.
When they closed the electrification, those units were available. Deseret purchased five of them and put two into service – other NdeM units went to Texas Utilities, Navajo Mining, and most famously, the Black Mesa & Lake Powell. The NdeM units had to be upgraded from 25kv to 50kv to begin operation, but they’ve been going strong for over 25 years now. Even the original units, in operation for 40 years, are still doing quite well! It’s a true delight to be able to see these in operation today still. I wonder how long these units could keep going for, outside of the coal/power plant questions we all have for the company as a whole. They seem to take care of them here, so I think the railroad will shutter long before the locomotives will give out!
At any rate, though this wasn’t our first choice and we were initially rather displeased with how things were going, we were happy to walk away from it with something more than the mess back by Bonanza. We ran into an employee on the way out of here and got some helpful info for the afternoon train, which was rather handy!
