Railfanning Keddie and Williams Loop, California: November 21, 2009

[kekedog]

very good,and how long the train is???

[picardie01]

very nice scenic video

[gwaithwyr]

Brilliant. One of the best railroad videos I have ever seen. And the detailed information completes an excellent job.

[ynnhoJ22]

woW!,enough traffic through these areas, I liked the snow-filled Williams Loop. Greetings from Durango, Mexico!

[CoastStarlight11]

Intense stuff!!!

[kevininquincy]

To see damage to the Feather River Canyon and the train tracks during the flood of 97, search for flooding in the Feather River Canyon or "1997 New Years Flood in Plumas County Trailer"

[mapexmac]

Love this video C60AC, love the location(s), the flags (BNSF & UP) and kudos to you for fanning in the snow! Great stuff, thumbs-up and added it to my fave list.

[rockguitarist946]

nice, what kind of camcorder do you use?

[C60AC]

@rockguitarist946 For these shots I used my Fujifilm Finepix S700. I now use a Canon FS20 camcorder for videos and my Fuji mainly for pictures. Thanks for commenting.

[whitemike265]

i appreciate your very detailed caption. it adds much to the experience, and helps me visualize exactly what you experienced. i need to make a trip back up to keddie for some good spotting...i'm running out of places around the bay area.

[xtremepadrefan]

cool warbonnet

[CoastStarlight11]

O my gawd!!!!!

[bnsf7597]

great job i subbed you

[sgtredbluered]

Top quality video shot in a great railfan location.

[Railrodder]

Beutiful video! I especially liked the scenery! Thanks for sharing this!

[ValleySubRails]

Darn, wish I was there. I was in Oregon at the time...

[MrSebifast]

Very Nice!

[heelblocks]

Nice Videos! If they intermodel trains leave how many trains per day will the line lose?

[C60AC]

Thanks! Well, once it's all said and done I'd say about 4 or 6 trains daily less. UP will be switching some of the Donner traffic to the FRC in trade, such as the MNPRV and MNPRVB manifests. There should also be more grain and coal unit trains popping up around the FRC soon so, not all is lost with the intermodal switch. Just as long as UP is running some kind of train traffic through here, I'm happy.

[heelblocks]

Well thats good news, I heard BNSF Was going to buy the FRC but I guess that never happened. I hope everything turns out good for ya'll out there.

[C60AC]

There was rumors about that and it still might happen, but not anytime in the near future.

[cagorrie]

Excellent video, is the other track vearing away from the camera still in use or is that not used anymore ? Are they abandoning this route for Donner ?

Thanks again

Andrew

New Zealand

[C60AC]

The track going away from the camera is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Gateway Subdivision and sees about 4-6 trains daily. The first shot in this video of the BNSF train departing is actually this same line, just north of the Wye about 2 miles. UP will not completely abandon the FRC route for Donner but once they get the intermodal trains moved there will be a decrease in train traffic.

[SSW8040]

Maybe UP might sell the FRC to BNSF if they are willing to reroute their lower priority trains that come to and from Northern California to places like Kansas City and points east if they want to by Tennessee Pass.

They can keep their high priority trains on the former ATSF main.

They can use the northern line for low priority Stack trains.

[C60AC]

I've been hearing rumors about BNSF taking control of the FRC and it just might happen in say, the next 5 years if UP finds that their new system is working out well enough that they do not need the canyon enough to spend the extra time and money keeping the FRC maintained. UP would still need to get rights over the BNSF on this line, however, providing something happened on Donner that shut it down for several days...or even weeks and they would need somewhere to reroute that traffic.

[C60AC]

Even still, I'm all for BNSF buying the FRC if it is in the back of their mind because this would mean that they would most likely take control of the entire ex-WP main from SLC to Oakland/Stockton and they would move all trackage rights trains currently on Donner to FRC, plus within the coming years they would add more trains as a result of a strengthening economy.

[SSW8040]

Well BNSF would have to spend a lot of money to upgrade Tennessee Pass and to upgrade its ex SF line east of La Junta. There is a lot of jointed rail. TP has a 3% grade going east and a 1.7% grade going west. They have had 3 runaway trains in its last decade of service on TP including one coal train in 1994.

There hasn't been a train on TP since 1997.

The ex Rio Grande main from Salt Lake to Pueblo has sufficient clearances for Double Stacks not the Moffat Tunnel route via Bond.

[C60AC]

That being the case, the Canyon would end up seeing a very wide variety of BNSF traffic from BOTH routes of the old WP east and north of Keddie, something the line hasn't seen since just after the BNSF was granted trackage rights on the FRC around 1997 and 1998.

[SSW8040]

Well I think they would still keep the high priority trains to the ex Santa Fe line via Bakersfield and Barstow.

SP undercut the Tunnels on the ex Rio Grande mainline and ran a stack train from 1989 till maybe 1997 over the pass.

They might shift the low priority trains that run between Stockton, North Bay, Oakland, and Richmond that connect with Kansas City and points east over the FRC and TP.

You also have the steep Soldier Summit to consider it has 2% grades as well.

[spacecalander]

I think that GE power just sounds so wicked, at speed the howl is awesome!

[Jeffwecker81]

Awesome scenery!! 5 stars from me!!