One of my 1st trips on my own was a trip out to Montana and Utah back in 2000. One of the things on the "Hit List" was this dirt train on the ex-Rio Grande" out of Helper, Utah. Even though the UP/SP merger was back in 1996, the area around Helper took a step back in time. A large gathering of DRGW tunnel motors were based here in the late 90's and early 2000's. The tired old beast worked in sets on the locals and helpers sets area Solider Summit and over to Sunnyside. It was a photographer's time machine travels to see solid sets of Rio Grandes in their original settings well into the UP era.
Here the dirt train heads out of East Carbon and works back towards the mainline at Mounds and on to Helper. These trains would haul trash and contaminated dirt to a landfill at East Carbon for East Carbon Landfill 6 days a week. This moved started around 1992 and lasted til around 2005 when the opening of a new landfill near Tooele, UT, took over most of the Salt Lake trash and slow the traffic up on this branch.
