Freight Trains on the Raton Subdivision

About a week after I got home from my Amtrak trip, a friend and I got word of a BNSF tie-gang train, on duty, and making their way down the Raton Subdivision. For those who don't know, BNSF discontinued revenue freight service on Raton and Glorieta Subs between Trinidad, CO and Rosario, NM (About 35 miles northeast of Albuquerque) in 2008. This is largely because of the steep gradients of Raton and Glorieta Passes, which have grades up to 3.5%. Because of this, maintenance and modernization is not much of a priority, only just enough to keep Amtrak's Southwest Chief train running, which makes this line still dosed with semaphores, searchlights, jointed rail, code line, and even a wig wag crossing signal up until 2021. It's really a rolling time machine, a glimpse into the railroading of the good ol' days. Now, even though maintenance is limited, that doesn't mean it's non existent. Every once in a while, usually in the summer, BNSF will run maintenance trains up and down the line, which is of course the one type of freight train you can still see down here. And that is what we will see in this video! We would chase the previously mentioned tie gang train from Raton Pass down to the old Semaphore signals, and then into the small city of Las Vegas, New Mexico where the train ultimately terminated. The following day, ANOTHER BNSF Freight Train, this time a ballast made it's way down. The Ballast was very short on power, so it had to double over Raton Pass, which ultimately took way too long and it's crew ran out of hours at Raton, so it just tied down. A second crew later that day took it down to French, but we missed that move while out going for Amtrak unfortunately. Speaking of Amtrak, we get a lot of that in this video too. Hopefully you enjoy this fun compilation, as well as a little fun bit I put together at the end ;). Filmed: Aug 12-14th - Chapters: 00:00 - Intro & BNSF 3779 Wooton 00:33 - BNSF 3777 Raton 01:34 - BNSF 3777 Hebron 02:24 - BNSF 3777 Schomberg 03:06 - BNSF 3777 Maxwell 04:03 - BNSF 3777 Springer 05:32 - BNSF 3777 Robinson 06:20 - BNSF 3777 Colmor 07:10 - BNSF 3777 Nolan 08:16 - BNSF 3777 Wagon Mound 09:15 - BNSF 3777 Valmora 10:15 - BNSF 3777 Onava 11:10 - BNSF 3777 Las Vegas 12:45 - AMTK 147 Searchlight 840 13:59 - AMTK 204 Track Warrant 15:10 - AMTK 204 Searchlight 838 15:54 - The Next Day 16:06 - BNSF 6742 Wooton 18:41 - BNSF 6742 Keota 19:52 - BNSF 6742 East Raton 22:10 - BNSF 6742 Raton X-Overs 22:41 - BNSF 6742 West Raton 23:47 - Switching at Raton 30:17 - AMTK 168 Springer 32:08 - AMTK 40 Springer 32:55 - AMTK 168 Track Warrant 33:26 - AMTK 168 Searchlight 701 34:29 - BNSF 702.1 Defect Detector 34:45 - AMTK 168 Searchlight 704 35:36 - AMTK 168 Levy 36:21 - AMTK 168 Watrous 37:32 - AMTK 168 Romeroville 38:15 - The Next Day 38:24 - AMTK 135 Wagon Mound 39:01 - 722 Semaphores 39:18 - AMTK 193 Wagon Mound 40:13 - FAILS 41:10 - Outro - Check out my... Instagram:   / track_warrant_763   Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/1648478... Email: [email protected] ~~~