18-10-12 PHOTOS: Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon

Last October I booked a trip to visit the Grand Canyon in conjunction with some people I know in Phoenix. As much as one might like to try, the Grand Canyon is really not a great thing to try and day trip all the way from Phoenix considering it is close to a 4 hour drive each way. Therefore we arranged an overnight stay in Flagstaff, AZ in order to put a full day in at the park and see the entire south rim from Desert Watchtower to Grand Canyon Village. Flagstaff, like a lot of high desert towns in Arizona, is a pretty hip community and it was possible to go on an outright microbrewery crawl all within sight of the Amtrak station.

Flagstaff is located on the old Santa Fe Main Line, the premier double track line between LA and Chicago. The Station sees the daily arrival of Amtrak's Southwest Chief in both directions along with 50 or so odd BNSF through freights. While my group was in Flagstaff I was able to get some reasonable photography in and around the station area. Also included in this set are some random pics elsewhere in Arizona and photos taken while riding Phoenix's Valley Metro light rail line in Tempe. You can find the full set of photos here (mirror).

The Flagstaff Amtrak Station was built by the ATSF in 1926 and was of a style to support the local tourism industry.

Today the station primarily houses the Flagstaff visitor's center, with the Amtrak waiting area and ticket window being relegated to smaller space on the east side of the facility. The eastbound Chief is scheduled to arrive at about 4am with the westbound arriving daily around 8:30pm. 

The tourism industry resulted in a number of hotels advertising their services to arriving passengers via tall signage that remains in place today. 

Train traffic is fairly constant with grade crossings on either side of the station providing advance warning of approaching traffic. Here we see a pair of BNSF ES44C4's, #6987 and #4285, heading westbound with a double stack intermodal train first passing the old ATSF Flagstaff freight house and then the San Francisco Street crossing.

Some native rabbitbrush added a splash of color to the scene. 

ATSF painted C44-9W #691 was riding behind BNSF Tier IV ES44AC #3962 at the head of an eastbound intermodal with T4 ES44AC, #3846 and C44-10W #7620 running behind.

Past the freight house, which now serves as the local BNSF offices, there is a logging railroad 2-8-0 on display.

While hanging out at the Lumberyard Brewing Company, I was continually interrupted by freight traffic whistling for the San Francisco St crossing. Here another westbound intermodal train is being led by BNSF C44-10W #7363.

BNSF C44-9W #4431 passing in front of the Amtrak station with the San Francisco mountains in the background. 

 

A trio of BNSF ES44C4's including #7041, #6909 and #7041 crosses San Francisco St with a westbound train of autoracks.

The next eastbound intermodal train had 3 more BNSF ES44C4's, #4235, #6889 and #7234, along with a single ES44AC #6318.

That afternoon's oddball engine showed up deep into Golden Hour with NS SD70ACe #1050 tucked in with a trio of BNSF C44-9W's, #5490, #4533 and #5489 and all running elephant style at the head of an eastbound intermodal train.

Golden hour overload at the Flagstaff Amtrak station. Between 1999 and 2018, Amtrak maintained another station at Williams Junction about 30 miles to the west as its explicit gateway to the Grand Canyon. Passengers would connect with the Grand Canyon Railway via a shuttle bus to downtown Williams. Unfortunately the GCR grew tired of large numbers of random people hanging out in its hotel waiting room at all hours of the night and announced an end to the partnership in 2017 prompting Amtrak to close the station, which had no infrastructure beyond a platform and a dirt road for the shuttle bus. A new Thruway Bus connection to the park was then established from Flagstaff.

Great scenery and low speed limits around and through Sedona.

Here is a token amount of Grand Canyon content. These views are from the Desert Watchtower area at the far east end of the park. Since most tourists will start their day at the Visitor's Center at the west end of the park, one can avoid the crowds if traveling east to west along the south rim.

I guess this would be a Globally Important Bird.

Bird!

Storms rolling in over the North Rim as seen from Grand Canyon Village.

The El Tovar Hotel, this facility is directly served by the Grand Canyon Railway, a former ATSF branch from the Main Line at Williams.

The adjacent station was built by the Santa Fe as part of the general trend of connecting popular natural attractions to the rail transportation system. The terminal actually supports 6 tracks, only 4 of which are still in service.

GCR Alco FPA-4 #6776 was on display at the Grand Canyon Village terminal. By this late in the evening all of the passenger trains had already departed south as there are no servicing facilities in the park. ATSF Passenger service on the line ended in 1968, but was restored in 1989 after investors purchased the branch for tourist operations. 

Heading back to the Phoenix area I caught IRTX chop nose GP7 #923 switching the BNSF El Mirage autorack terminal.

On Phoenix's Valley Metro Light Rail, the fare paid area is designated by red lines painted on the pavement.

VMLR LRV #111B arriving westbound into the McClintock-Apache Station. The single line is 28 miles long and runs east-west through the Phoenix metro area.

Downtown Tempe's historic Hayden Flour Mill and "A" Mountain. 

Interlocking signals in the street running portion are set flat into the pavement.

LRV #101B at Mill Ave Station at dusk.

LRV #144B departing the McClintock-Apache Station at night.

After a long trip it was finally time to fly hone. Here we see the tower and an AZ Air National Guard KC-135R at Phoenix Sky Harbour airport.

Next time we will return to our regular programming of PRR Main Line signaling ;-)