NMHR has announced that 2926 has been approved by NMDOT to operate on 40 miles from Bernalillo to Los Lunas. This only applies to non-revenue deadhead moves for the time being

Railfan & Railroad Article: https://railfan.com/new-mexico-heritage ... a-fe-2926/

NMHR Website: https://2926.us/

I believe this is the west end of the line that goes over Raton Pass, now owned by New Mexico, and mostly used by the Southwest Chief and possibly Railrunner commuter trains. So not quite the "main line" of BNSF (the Southern Transcon route through Texas), but a secondary main line nonetheless.

PMC -

If I checked their site correctly, Albuquerque is at about the midpoint between Bernalillo and Los Lunas.


Les

Indeed, that is the far west/south end of the Raton Pass route, before it connects to the Transcon at Belen, maybe two miles miles west/south of Los Lunas: https://www.bnsf.com/ship-with-bnsf/map ... ad_map.pdf

Trains has an article, too, but something is up with their page today.

Speaking of the Trains Magazine article, apparently they were told that the expanded operating range needed no diesel at the head end or PTC

Here's the Trains article: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... -trackage/
The section north of there only sees two trains per day I believe, #'s 3&4, the Southwest Chief, as far as the connection with the Joint Route in south central Colorado.

Baby steps, let them prove they know what they're doing. Congrats.

HI
That's good news, finally the engine will get a chance to really stretch
her legs.. and the caretakers of the locomotive, can finally see and hear the locomotive, running at speed.. now the real tests can begin.
On how the locomotive will perform, running on its own,, or maybe pulling a small train..

Now all that hard work, over the years, has finally led up to this point, all I can say is Congratulations.. Pat.

I'm just wondering, in an idealistic world, where could they run to where there are turning facilities available? Belen had a wye, but I didn't see a turntable. How far north would they have to go to find a suitable place to turn?

MS

They don't need PTC as of yet, but they're also only running equipment moves, light moves, etc along the line, for various promotional visits and events. It's my understanding that they can't run any passenger-carrying excursions without PTC onboard. Still - baby steps.

Would probably eventually have to be longer trips outside the immediate area. There is the yard wye in Bellen and the whole mainline configuration south of ABQ is a giant wye - ABQ-Bellen/Bellen-Transcon Jct/Transcon Jct to ABQ. The wye in Santa Fe was torn up, so the nearest wye to the north/east is Lamy, AFAIK.

An interesting video, ATSF 2926 (returning from a Route 66 event) and Rail Runner on adjacent tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqasYCDy0qY
Above someone mentioned "baby steps", showing that the ATSF 2926 crew know what they are doing, and that the locomotive is capable of operating without blocking a mainline, and this trip may be part of that process.

what's that weird contraption on the smokestack? I see it in historic photos from the Santa Fe days so it's definitely historically accurate - I just have no clue what it is or what it does?

Extendable smokestack that could be raised at the engineer's control.

So nice to see good, clear hand signals including car counts........mld