2002 02 Colorado, Wyoming

Today was more or less a bust photographically.  Not that this was a bad thing or that I am disappointed.  It just does not happen every day.. plus today I was very tired.  I did not get up to be anyplace for sunrise, and after that just took it easy until I went into Green River (the next town west on 80) to get something to eat and go to the Sweetwater County Historical Society.  I had a very nice chat with a couple of people there, and they answered a lot of questions for me and had many suggestions.  It was quite a nice visit.

Green River is quite the railroad town.  It is also the center of trona mining in the entire world, I think.  There is a huge trona deposit here.  It's a mineral that is used in many different things.

 http://lmi.state.wy.us/0498/0498a2.htm

The Union Pacific rail yard in Green River is huge and very interesting to watch from the long pedestrian overpass.  Most of the rail yard isn't in these pictures..

Next time I am in this area I think I might stay in Green River and not Rock Springs.  It's smaller and seemed more walkable and just more interesting somehow.

After visiting the musuem I just did a lot of driving.  One of the things I saw was the Union Pacific crew replacing ties on a long (miles and miles) section of track.  This is all done with little machines that run on the rails.  Each one has a specific job, clearing the gravel from around the ties, yanking the old tie out to one side, picking up the old tie, inserting the new tie, tamping it into place, placing and hammering in the new nails, tamping the rails, making sure the rails are exactly in place, picking up the wood trash, picking up the metal trash with an electromagnet, and several chores I could not figure out.  Here are some of the machines.  I think there were at least two entire sets of these machines spaced a mile or two apart.

A gravel sweeper:

A nailer:

The guy in the rear of this machine is loading railroad spikes into the "magazines" for the nail guns.

I should have made some notes about the rest of the machines I photographed.  If I had I would have put them all in, in order, with the notes..  Anyway, there was a procession of about 12 of machines, all slightly different, and all with a specific job.  Really cool to watch this.  No workers banging in spikes with hammers .. but it is still noisy dirty work I am sure.

This work was being done on the stretch of track going out to the Black Buttes Coal mine, which is about 30 miles east of Rock Springs on 80 and then about 20 miles south.  The railroad was busing the workers out to this site in a couple of school buses.

The coal mine was just an immense operation, and I got onto their property without realizing it.  I started to see signs that were talking about blasting, and I was on a road that was about 50 feet wide, to accomodate those huge mine-only type trucks that are 25 feet tall.  Not wanting to have an encounter with one of them and risk being not seen and squashed I turned around.  But I would like to revisit this place and see if I could get permission to get in and photograph.  This is one of those mines with a titanic earth moving crane:

My guess is that a person would be much smaller than the black sign at the top of the crane is high.  I was a long ways away from this thing..  It would be very cool to photograph this shovel.  I am sure I would have to sign all sorts of waivers to get in to do it.

Here's that wide road:

The "tube" thing is a covered conveyor that goes about a mile and a half or two miles, from one of the mine pits to the place where the coal is shipped.  In one of the pics you can see the conveyor go over the Union Pacific tracks.

On the way back to Rock Springs I went in to get a look at the Jim Bridger power plant, which is alleged to be the tallest structure in Wyoming.  I did not take any pics there, but there is another mine north of the power plant, and it has one of those very very long conveyors to take coal from the mine right to the plant.

One more thing.  The UP rail line that goes along 80 and through Rock Springs and Green River is really busy.  It's a main line from east west, but I was still surprised by how many trains there were.  Every 2 - 4 minutes a 100 car train could go by.

I think I will be feeling a lot less tired tomorrow .. I hope the weather cooperates with me.  This evening the light was lousy for the first time since I have been here.  It's been smoky and/or less than clear at times, but always nice and usable.