Down to UP, Part 2

In my last post, I said I was waiting for UP 5003 East to get moving and roll through Maricopa, Arizona. I was scouting for new locations on the east side of Maricopa when I stumbled across a ballast train stopped in the Arizona Grain siding. UP 4898 and 9735 were at the head of about 15 or so green UP cars. It seemed they were waiting to go east too, but obviously the stack train had priority.

UP 5003 finally did get to go at 13:59.

Unfortunately for the ballast train, another stack train came rolling along at 14:22 before they could get out of the siding. UP 8665, 4594 were on the head end and UP 8418, 7432 were trailing.

I chased the train a bit, but they were too fast to catch up to. They were doing around 50 MPH and soon enough the speed limit on the highway went to 30. I did get a tail end shot.

The ballast train finally got out at 14:43 and that was the last train for quite a while. The maintenance of way forces moved in and started doing track work, so I knew it was time for lunch. I waited around a while afterward but nothing showed up, so once the sun was down, I headed north back to Phoenix.

I have video for all of these trains, but I have no way to process it here, so it will have to wait until at least the weekend. Link to videos