Day 15 - Gillette WY to Rawlins WY

Good morning Wyoming, and time to go visit the Powder River Basic. I fueled up and headed off for the drive down. Didn't see much for a good hour or so, as it takes a while to get into the coal fields. This is real miner country, and the previous night while looking for a restaurant I witnessed the locals drag racing their pickup trucks at the lights. These aren't so much boy racers, as cowboy racers. Gillette is very much a mining town where you're more likely to find a CAT dealer than a car dealer. The impression I get is there are a lot of young single males working on remote coal, gas and oil fields, getting paid a lot and with nothing much to spend it on. So you end up with everyone driving around in souped up pickup trucks.

Anyway, I cruised along for a while, before trying to find some railroad action. From last time I remembered I had to veer off the main highway so I picked a side road at random and went hunting. The signs at the entrance were confusing, saying NO TRESSPASSING but also that it was an open range and to stick to the roads. I went down trying to find a high point and just get my bearings but didn't have much luck. I passed a truck who seemed determined to run me off the narrow road; he then slowed right down and I think wanted to talk to me why I was on private land (was I?). I didn't especially want to have that discussion so did not stop, and soon decided this was definitely the wrong road and I'd made a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Did a U turn and drove back out, only to find that the truck had also done a U turn and again tried to run me off the road and have a chat to me; one nice thing about driving a 4x4 SUV is that you can easily escape from homicidal truck drivers!

Back on the highway and away from overly serious truck drivers, I soon found the road I was looking for, and set up a stake out for a train. About half an hour later (an eternity in the Powder River Basin) I saw a train and got my shots.

The trains out here are big . And note how there are four main lines here. Four! Quarter of an hour later…

Ten minutes later…

A pickup with tinted windows pulled up and parked down the road a bit from me. He wasn't here to watch the trains; I wonder if he was watching me? Speaking of watching me…

I repositioned away from my watchers and watched a storm brewing off in the distance.

I had quite a wait but eventually my train came. Unfortunately the sun ran away losing some of the drama.

Soon after another two trains came by, and the second train soon caught up to and over took number one.

Back up the road again, my watcher had gone by now so I had the place to myself.

I found part of a huge dragline, I think they're called.

More wild weather out here on the plains.

I found another side road, this time with a pickup parked at the end of the road just sitting there for hours. No idea why, this was clearly a public road complete with a "Private property, please stick to public roads" sign. Never mind he didn't bother me, and probably wondered what I was doing.

I followed this train up the road a bit, wasn't too hard as the basin here is very undulating, so the trains will be roaring along, next minute they slam into an ascent and they're down to walking pace. The mentality out here is that coal is not a perishable, so it is far more cost effective to stick 3 units on a train and have them slog their guts out as they pull the train along at barely walking pace, rather than putting on twice as many units to have the coal delivered 3 hours faster. And the reason they can do this is thanks to modern AC driven locos which can individually control each axle's power for maximum adhesion, and since they're using three phase induction motors for their traction engines (a topic I spent far too many hours studying at university) they deliver maximum power at 0 rpm with no risk of overheating, which makes them perfect for this application. A DC motor, which is what older locos use, will burn out and melt at 0 rpm or if you drive it too hard for too long. So you tend to find DC locos powering fast trains, and AC locos powering the sloggers. The big problem with AC locos is they cost an extra million per loco to make.

Anyway, I went down the road and found an overbridge.

Here I got a friendly toot-toot, and then I noticed prolific waving from the driver through the windscreen. I gave him a big cheery wave back and he seemed happy. I turned around and soon he was passing another train. I think this is the spot where my tripod and brand spanking new video camera got blown over last year, resulting in my now battle scarred video camera.

It was getting cold now with a bitter wind blowing; this matched my experience from last year perfectly.

The sun was starting to get low now and there were some great silhouettes to be had.

I found a side road and went to wait for a train.

Here comes another…

And then another came round the curve to cross this one.

And here he comes.

One I went and waited for a train to cross the highway underpass.

By now it was sunset time so I found a good spot and took a bunch of sunset photos. If there is one thing that the Powder River Basin excels at, besides trains, it's "golden hour" lighting and its sunsets. Ok so that's actually two things.

And then lo and behold, what so come past but another train.

And one last sunset photo as I drove off into the darkness.

I drove for another 3 hours and eventually arrived in Rawlins. I found a nice but cheap motel after a few minutes of hunting and then went to find food. Had a very average meal at "Penny's Diner" which it turns out is an artifically quaint chain of diners. The staff working there made your average McDonald's employee look positively enthusiastic! They hadn't even bothered to wipe the table down and I could still see the previous person's drool. I also didn't get a knife or fork with my meal; not a huge deal on a burger but it was served "open", so I had to assemble it myself before I could eat it. Yup pretty awesome service there.

Headed back and started processing some of my 250 photos before climbing into bed and falling strait to sleep.