Re: 483/480 Exrta West

A rare event. The only reason for a helper to be still in the train, would be for it to apply braking power in the form of using its drifting throttle - normally used to control its speed when running light down hill - to provide additional braking power for the train.

I would have thought that all those empty tanks would be plenty of braking, but, those big excavators might be a tad heavy.

One thing for certain, I bet they are going rather slowly.....

My guess is they might be heading for the La Plata coal mine between Farmington and Hesperus. Anyone got an idea when that got going?