Happened to be near the UP main a good part of the day. Didn't notice any Boardman coal or potash trains west of Hinkle today, but some may have got by me or been earlier in the morning. Is there a work window on the Washy due to recent fires?

Most of the locals out of Hinkle (and Wallula) used to be pairs of GP39-2 with an occasional GP40-2. GP60s started showing up a couple years ago and slowly took over. Today I noticed a GP39-2 as third unit (dead?) on an eastbound for Hinkle, presumably for inspection/repair at Hinkle or headed east? On my way home I noticed the Castle local (works west out of Hinkle weekday early evenings) had a GP39-2 and GP60. It's good to see the 39s back, a pair of 60s is real overkill on the Castle Local and evidently running long hood forward is discouraged.

DPU is common especially east out of Hinkle. Empty and smaller trains often run without DPU. Until about three years ago, never saw DPU on intermodal, then all the sudden they started showing up on the rear, only one at first, now sometimes as doubles. Green River potash trains will run mid-train DPU and rear. Passed one train while on the freeway that looked to have mid train DPU with auto racks on one side and manifest on the other - couldn't tell which way it was headed.

UP had bribed/coerced shippers into using containers, and you rarely saw TOFC. On a typical day, you would see from zero to maybe 8 trailers. All that has changed. More and more TOFC can be found mixed into stack trains, either on spine cars or sometimes in wells (both 53' and pup trailers). Nothing like BNSF, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the train at most. UP 7729 East today must be one of the new Z trains through here. It had a good mix of trailers, UPS pups, several LTL carriers pups/53s and some unmarked 53s. They met UP 4072 West at Nordeen (near the top of the bLue Mountains at Kamela) which had CSXT 350 as third unit, mix of 53' (including some CSX) and import containers and a few trailers.

Traffic east and west out of Hinkle appeared to have been pretty steady today. Looks like UP is skimming some of the intermodal cream that BNSF used to haul. Even though BNSF is swimming in oil (sometimes literally), it looks llike it is UP who is making the money. Whoever thought UP would have a 63.5% operating ratio? Wasn't it 2004/2005 when they melted down trying to run a hot UPS train on the Sunset?

The only thing constant is change ...