Before the Powder River Basin coal boom (and afterwards) the Bighorn Mine 5
miles west of Sheridan WY shipped lots of coal even into the early 2000s. It
was not uncommon for the thru freight 'local' to pick up 20 cars or so at
Sheridan. When I was working the Sheridan Yard engine in the late 1990s we
would go out to Bighorn Mine (Kiewit, not Kleenburn) to take out empties and
bring the loads back to Sheridan where they would be picked up by the 'local'.
Some times there were enough cars to be picked up that helpers had to be added
to the freight train. Bighorn Mine was still shipping coal, tho in smaller lots
from a truck dump, when I retired in 2009. I remember one period in the late
1990s when the BNSF would not run the thru 'local' for over a week. We had some
60 cars of coal that needed to go so the trainmaster finally called an 'extra'
using a set of helpers as power to take the coal to laurel where it would then
go east on the NP. When I came to Sheridan in 1975 we had an assigned daily
Mine Run job that would take 30-50 cars out to the mine in the morning and
bring the loads from the previous afternoon back to town. After lunch the Mine
Run would take another 30-50 empties out to the mine and bring back any loads
that were loaded between the morning trip and the afternoon. One time I brought
55 loaded 100 ton coal cars in from the mine with a single SD9. That was the
max it could handle and you had to get a run down off the knob at the mine so
the SD9 could make it over the 'hill' at MP 705.
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