2007 05 Wyoming

2007 06 02 Gillette

A driving and looking day. I drove north on 16 and south on 59, and onto a lot of large and well maintained but mostly unmarked gravel roads to look at the coal mining in this area. It is easy to find the mines on the maps - there is a rail loop for each one, and you can see the immense coal silos from miles off. The map I have is outdated since there are clearly more loading loops and silos than are indicated on my maps. The trains are all Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

The main rail line out of this area goes south along US59, and it seems to be being enlarged from 2 (in some places 3) to 4 lines. There is a lot of rail construction activity. I am sure this is because demand for coal is so high. The mines are operating at capacity, and it sure looks like there is a lot of congestion on the rail line. Many trains stopped waiting, or moving very slowly. About 50 trains are loaded each day in the region.

The big piece of rail maintenance equipment in Arvada must be part of all this work.

Each of these coal trains is about 125 cars, and is called a "unit train". The set of cars stays together as it goes from mine to power plant and back. They all have two engines pulling and one or two pushing.

This is a coal silo. It's hard to see how large it is. Below the grass horizon is the opening that the trains drive through to be loaded. The second shot captures the entire length of one of the trains.

This shot is from a bridge over a section of the main line.

I also did some looking at the mines themselves. This is one of the shovels that is used to move the earth and rock that covers the coal seam. Generally the way the mines work is to move a very wide open pit over the coal seam, transferring the cover material from one side of the pit to the other.