No body has posted anything yet on Railspot as to its location tonight. If they went about as fast as yesterday they would be in Cameron. If they picked up the pace they may have made Temple. Don't really know yet.
Most recent post in RS had it waiting for a relief conductor to come out of Galveston before it departed Bellville (still there as of 0745AM CST). Next town was to be Flatonia. After Temple, speculation has it running up the ex-Santa Fe to Lubbock & Amarillo.
You'd need 48" radius curves to make it work! Keith's overland brass Schnabel car barely made it over Sherman Hill Model RR Club's N layout, with 18" radius curves!
Unfortunately for me that makes the most sense to go that route. Not having to deal with Tower 55 alone is reason enough, and I think the FW&D is near capacity right now according to some of the Railspot posts. Of course, the infrastructure is probably better via FW and I'm quite sure they don't wanna put that sucker on the ground! I think Hulcher would call in sick on that one.
Huh? Somebody better look at a map. The old Santa Fe line out of Bellville goes through such thriving towns as Kenney, Brenahm, Somerville, Caldwell, Milano, Cameron, Buckholts, Rogers and finally Temple. Flatonia is miles away from any of them on a different railroad.
Just advertising for the company who owns it and some of the contractors doing the job for them at the refinery.
Well, I guess it made it to Cameron last night. Word is that it will go from Temple to Lampasas, Brownwood, Sweetwater, Lubbock, Plainview, Amarillo and up. Scanner frequency to Temple still 161.415 then 160.935 to Sweetwater.
hemi, 48" radius for n scale??? i would think if set up right you'd be able to run it on around a 24" if the load was short enough..... but i don't know beast
More photos. http://perroux.us/pages/reactor.html [ March 31, 2005, 10:49 AM: Message edited by: r_i_straw ]
Here is the current route listing. Hope this helps some one south of here. I guess the tank is for Suncor Energy's refinery here in CO. Guess we get to watch it unload also. This is the largest load ever unloaded at the port of Houston and the lagest schnabel car also. I really hope i catch this monster. Steve Route from Temple shows to be: Brownwood - Sweetwater - Snyder - Lubbock - Plainview - Amarillo - Dalhart - Texline - Trinidad - La Junta - Pueblo - Colo. Springs - Denver.
I wonder why they are not going through Walsenburg. Seems like the shorter route. Maybe clearance problems or they just want to get it out of the way of all the traffic on that line.
How many more locomotives would be required to get this thing over Raton Pass with its 2.5% to 3% grades PLUS the tunnel at the summit? I'd skip a day or two of work to watch that assault on Raton!!
CLosest it'll come to Raton Pass in the north side of the pass near Trinidad, CO. It'll take the FW&D/C&S out of Amarillo over Trinchera Pass to Trinidad via Clayton, Des Moines & Folsom, NM. I wonder if it may need some help over either Trinchera or up the Front Range.....
I wouldn't think so. That's still a lot of power for really just the one load. The hot box detectors were counting 70 axles so take away the engine and you have 64. Of those 28 are empty flat cars, cabooses and a tool car. The load would be equivalent to nine standard loaded freight cars. And it would only have to go 15 MPH. For the AC traction motors that would not be too bad.
