 |
Re: El Cajon, CA based company wants to run Eagle Mountain RR
Author: mook
Date: 09-19-2016 - 22:01
ARB has bought a really strange one here.
Eagle Mtn has been inoperable, as stated, since 1986. It's disconnected from UP and practically all traces of the former yard (per Google) are essentially gone. The old U-Boats are gone. Part of the track is washed away farther up the hill. There appears to be a few cars (couple of rotted-out flat cars, a hopper) still up at the mine, and there are lots of stacks of rail up there. All per Google using images of uncertain age.
IF any rock is coming out of the mine now (the press release says there is; I have my doubts), yes, it's coming out by truck which is the only practical method for very small amounts of material. Whatever might come out now bears no comparison to what was shipped by Kaiser or to what will be needed for the Salton Sea project.
If they're comparing emissions of a tier-4 (or better) diesel to the old U-boats, then yes there's a huge emission reduction per horsepower-hour. That's a phony comparison IMO, since the U-boats have been gone for 30 years.
Really, what we have here is a way to get rock from the old mine to Salton Sea, where it's going to be dumped to build a dike ("barrier" in the documents) as part of the "Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Program." In principle, it will be an industrial railroad like the Oro Dam Railroad that was run by the contractor building Oroville Dam to get rock from the river bottom to the dam site (in that case, along the former WP line that was left after realignment for the dam project). It would only run while dike construction is underway then get abandoned again. It would probably be possible to do the job without any regularly-used connection to UP: bring down the rock, dump it onto a conveyor at Ferrum or into a bunch of trucks for delivery to the work site. In terms of bringing down the rock, yes, rail is the best way to do it for GHG (carbon per ton-mile) and traditional emission (Tier-4+, grams per hp-hr) purposes. The "last mile" almost certainly won't be by rail. Emission REDUCTION? Hardly, other than speculative based on what might be produced by a gaggle of trucks.
Use of tier-4+ locomotives is proposed in order to get ARB money; must be lower-emission than what's required by the regs. Where they'll go when the job is done (maybe as much as 5 years?) is anybody's guess. Since the only practical way to get the level of emission control claimed is with SCR, I can't imagine any Class 1 wanting them.
More info about the overall project: [www.water.ca.gov]
and [www.water.ca.gov] (pdf file)
And no, this doesn't appear to have anything to do with HSR, Mexican port access, or resurrection of the SD&AE. If the railroad actually gets rebuilt for this, it would of course be available for other jobs afterward like the pumped storage scheme that was mentioned here a week or 2 ago.
Eagle Mtn has been inoperable, as stated, since 1986. It's disconnected from UP and practically all traces of the former yard (per Google) are essentially gone. The old U-Boats are gone. Part of the track is washed away farther up the hill. There appears to be a few cars (couple of rotted-out flat cars, a hopper) still up at the mine, and there are lots of stacks of rail up there. All per Google using images of uncertain age.
IF any rock is coming out of the mine now (the press release says there is; I have my doubts), yes, it's coming out by truck which is the only practical method for very small amounts of material. Whatever might come out now bears no comparison to what was shipped by Kaiser or to what will be needed for the Salton Sea project.
If they're comparing emissions of a tier-4 (or better) diesel to the old U-boats, then yes there's a huge emission reduction per horsepower-hour. That's a phony comparison IMO, since the U-boats have been gone for 30 years.
Really, what we have here is a way to get rock from the old mine to Salton Sea, where it's going to be dumped to build a dike ("barrier" in the documents) as part of the "Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Program." In principle, it will be an industrial railroad like the Oro Dam Railroad that was run by the contractor building Oroville Dam to get rock from the river bottom to the dam site (in that case, along the former WP line that was left after realignment for the dam project). It would only run while dike construction is underway then get abandoned again. It would probably be possible to do the job without any regularly-used connection to UP: bring down the rock, dump it onto a conveyor at Ferrum or into a bunch of trucks for delivery to the work site. In terms of bringing down the rock, yes, rail is the best way to do it for GHG (carbon per ton-mile) and traditional emission (Tier-4+, grams per hp-hr) purposes. The "last mile" almost certainly won't be by rail. Emission REDUCTION? Hardly, other than speculative based on what might be produced by a gaggle of trucks.
Use of tier-4+ locomotives is proposed in order to get ARB money; must be lower-emission than what's required by the regs. Where they'll go when the job is done (maybe as much as 5 years?) is anybody's guess. Since the only practical way to get the level of emission control claimed is with SCR, I can't imagine any Class 1 wanting them.
More info about the overall project: [www.water.ca.gov]
and [www.water.ca.gov] (pdf file)
And no, this doesn't appear to have anything to do with HSR, Mexican port access, or resurrection of the SD&AE. If the railroad actually gets rebuilt for this, it would of course be available for other jobs afterward like the pumped storage scheme that was mentioned here a week or 2 ago.
