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.