Ryan's Express

The following is a photo journal created by Ryan Baker of Flagstaff, Arizona.
Ryan is an employee of Burlington-Northern/Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF).
Recently, his job took him across Northern Arizona right after an unusually intense snow storm.
Ryan hitched a ride on a westbound train to Needles, California, where he then picked up an eastbound train to drive to Belen, New Mexico.

Although I have never communicated with Ryan he sent this photo journal in email form to a mutual friend of ours who lives in Prescott, AZ, who then in turn forwarded it to me for my enjoyment and with the author's permission I now share it with you.

The particular stretch of railroad featured in this photo journal parallels Old Route 66 across Northern Arizona from the Kingman area to the Flagstaff area which is my favorite stretch of the Mother Road and one which I have driven perhaps a hundred times in my life and hope to drive a few hundred more times.

It is a spiritual journey of sorts for me, not just a physical one so these photos mean a lot to me as I've never driven through that area when it was as snowy as shown below.

Ryan does an excellent job in his photo captions (inside quotation marks) and Ryan took each of these 28 photos so with that, enjoy!

"Just west of Canyon Diablo about to make the turn and start up the 'hard pull'".

"Mile Post 335" (San Francisco Peaks in background).

"Approaching East Flagstaff"

"San Francisco Peaks from Bellemont"

"Audley (just west of Seligman)"

"About to dive down into Pica before the assult on Yampai hill starts.
(you can see the water tank for the steam locos back in the day.)"

"Climbing Yampai at a whoppin 27mph.....that's a good speed for that grade."

"Inside one of the few remaining section houses on the entire transcon.
This is at Nelson."

"Sitting next to the section house at Nelson waiting for the Kingman local to get out of the way."

"Just west of Peach Springs. Lots of snow here. Was told it was very unique to have this much on the ground here."

"Crozier Canyon"

"Valentine, AZ.

"The next day..."

"Cauaght a 2.1 horsepower/ton stack train out of Needles. Seen here we are gettting run around by a V train that only boasted 2.9 HPT, so they weren't doing too much better than we were on the stiff climb up to Kingman.
It took at least 10 minutes for them to get by us as we were both moving at full power but down in the 20-30 mph range on the grade."

"Climbing out of Kingman"

"Crozier Canyon eastbound"

"On the approach to Cherokee crossovers"

"On the approach to Peach Springs"

"The section house we werwe stopped at the day befroe as seen from the south main, which is on a different alignment than the north main."

"The two alignments (near Nelson) slowly come back together.
South main is on a 1.4% grade, North main is on a 1.8%."

"They come back together at the entrance to Nelson tunnel."

"It's a short tunnel, but cool nonetheless."

"A westbound near Audley. Seligman is on the other side of the mountain towards the right."

All photos and captions courtesy of Ryan Baker, Flagstaff, Arizona.