On Saturday, March 25, 2017 we decided to head up to Winter Park, CO to watch the Winter Park Express (WPE) for the last weekend of its season. Luckily for us the Moffat Sub saw a large amount of traffic that day.
We left the coal train back at Byres Canyon and decided to move to Winter Park to catch the Winter Park Express departing for Denver. We see it moving from the Siding of Fraser to Winter Park at Kings Crossing Road, we then move up to the West Portal to watch it depart. An interesting scenario came up as it departed; because the WPE was following the zephyr closely to stay on time and the Winter Park Resort Platform is in the tunnel signal block and the zephyr was occupying that block, dispatcher flagged the WPE past the red signal at Winter Park so they could reach the platform, but when they depart they have to run at restricting speed, which I believe is 15 mph, so they backed up to the signal and waited for dispatch to give them a green light allowing them to run at 40 mph through the tunnel. Meanwhile, the coal train waited back at Tabernash for the WPE to clear the tunnel so it could get a running start up the 2% grade and into the tunnel. After the Coal train cleared the tunnel there was two more westbound also waiting to pass through the tunnel. The first was a westbound manifest, maybe MNYRO, which we caught at Tabernash, and the other was an empty coal train, but it got too dark for me to record it. Finally, throughout the day we heard dispatcher talking to a 9000 foot MRONY that was setting out some engines at Glenwood Springs and had to pick up a repaired bad order car at Bond. He Made it into bond as we were catching the westbound manifest, so it was clear we would not see him in daylight if we saw him at all. He made it through the tunnel around midnight, and we were long gone.
In total the Moffat saw 11 trains, which is very good considering recent traffic volumes.
1. Loaded coal train early in the morning
2. Westbound WPE
3. Amtrak 5
4. P-berg Local
5. BNSF Eastbound Manifest
6. Loaded Coal train
7. Amtrak 6
8. Eastbound WPE
9. UP westbound manifest
10. Empty Coal train
11. 9000 MRONY
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Post time: Jun-18-2017