Where have all bigmacs gone?? I live over Donner Pass and when they first came out, sd90s were extremely common on most trains. Now I rarely see them, it's mostly a mixture of sd70s and GE stuff. Just out of curiosity, is it my imagination, or is UP depriving the pass of the power. Just wondering. Derek
I've been seeing quite a bit of them down here in Texas. Don't know why, though. You don't need much power on the coastal plains. Dwight
Hey Derek, do you ever get a chance to get a photo of the big rotary snow plows ove Donner now days? Dad and I watched one across the valley one time. It was really impressive how far they could throw the snow over into the canyon! Back home we watched the Big 4-12-2's push a scoop type snow plow at around 80 miles an hour across the flat plains going west of Harper, Kansas. The snow was flying a good hundred feet off both sides of the plow!
Sorry watash, but I've never seen a rotary in action. I live in Auburn("below the snow, above the fog")but I've occasionally seen consists of various snow trains heading up to the pass probably from roseville. When you drive I-80 over the pass, though, you can tell where the rotaries have worked cuz there's usually a line of rough, turned up snow about ten feet high all along the track. I have seen lots of really neat pictures of rotaries elsewhere, I'll see if I can find some on the net. Derek
Derek, I purchased a VCR Tape from Pentrex titled: "The Fight For Donner Pass", that shows the Rotaries in real action, along with other equipment including the big (D-8) Caterpillar crawler bull-dozer tractors shoving snow over the side into the canyon. Quite exciting, and has all the whistle signals too. (I called them Calipitters until I got to High School and cracked up my English teacher!) [ 17 February 2001: Message edited by: watash ]
Sorry I didn't reply earlier to this thread, but I have an answer for Derek and it is not far from his home. There are a group of UP SD90MAC's in pool service between Roseville and West Colton operating in DPU service on manifest trains. If you drop down the hill to Roseville, I would expect that several of these units would be at the engine service facility at any given time. The units assigned to this pool are UP8500 to UP8521, and are true 6000 hp units with the H-engine, not the 4300 hp 710-engined units in the 8000 class. For additional detail, these are the original units in this class which have the standard EMD style safety cab, not the newer squared off phase II cabs which the newer SD90's have (starting with 8522, I believe). Unfortunately, you probably won't see them in service over Donner too much, but they are not far from you. If you ever get a chance to visit Tehachapi Pass, you will most likely get to see these units in full-on mountain service.
