Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad

The Black Mesa & Lake Powell Railroad, short BM & LP is a totally isolated from the rest of the rail network, 125.5 km long, electrified main line that connects a coal mine near Kayenta with the Navajo Generating Station in Page in northeastern Arizona. The company is owned by the Salt River Project and the other owners of the power plant.

History

The line was opened in 1973 and was the first railway line world with 50 kilovolt, 60 Hertz; Single-phase AC electrified. The electrical equipment was chosen mainly for economic reasons. At first, fully automatic operation was planned, due to the presence of multiple crossings, this idea was discarded for safety reasons. The higher voltage was chosen to operate the route by means of a substation can. When the electrification with 25 kV would have been required three or four. Due to its isolated location, all cars must be transferred from the nearly 200 kilometers away Williams on the road.

Rolling stock

For the operation were from the beginning six electric locomotives E60CF series of General Electric available. These are technically the later built for Amtrak E60CP, but have only one Endführerstand. Of these six locomotives are parked with the 2010, four as spare parts and in use. Another was passed in August 2010 at the Arizona State Railroad Museum in Williams. In the late 1990s, they purchased as a replacement from Mexico eight new electric locomotives of the successor type E60C -2. Six of these are in use and two serve as a source of spare parts. In addition, a Morrison - Knudsen rebuilt from a U25B diesel locomotive series TE53 -4E available. The hopper car were all made in the seventies by Ortner and FMC and have recently been supplemented by 39 new, built by Johnstown America.

Operation

After getting two trains with two locomotives were at the same time in the early years on the track, just a train with up to 90 cars and four or five locomotives is now always on the go. Normally, this makes three round trips daily, one round on average lasts for eight hours. Tuesdays eliminates the noon train to have time for maintenance work on the track and overhead line equipment.