With the skyline of downtown Midland, Texas in the background, SD70ACe 8392 rolls a fast eastbound hotshot down the old Texas & Pacific mainline at 10:55 on Friday, December 6th, 2019.
Evening at Coahoma, Texas.
A hotshot westbound Z-Train speeds past MP503 on Union Pacific's ex-T&P Toyah Subdivision at 6:02 pm on February 6th, 2020.
Little of the geologic structure of West Texas’ Permian Basin is visible above the surface to the untrained eye. The reefs and basins that make up the 86,000-square mile oil-rich area are hidden thousands of feet below the sandy, mesquite and creosote bush-studded soils of the northeastern reaches of the vast Chihuahuan Desert.
During the late Mississippian Period, approximately 325 million years ago, the folding and faulting of the earth’s crust during the formation of today’s Ouachita Mountains fractured the ancient Tobosa Basin and divided it into three sections: Roughly from east to west they are the Midland Basin, the Central Basin Platform, and the Delaware Basin. When the great continent of Pangea began to break apart and the inland sea levels began to drop, the basins began to fill with sediments reaching depths of over 6,000 feet, and the ever-shallowing briny waters eventually evaporated into thin air.
One of the geologic structures visible above ground is the result of the massive vertical shear created between the Midland Basin and the Central Basin Platform; a shear which left a caprock escarpment in Ector County west of today’s Odessa, Texas. It is an uplift that the surveyors and graders of the Texas & Pacific chose to surmount with a broad S-curve cut into the western face of the escarpment on a 1% westward-descending grade.
With a Z-Train consist stretching back east on Union Pacific’s Toyah Sub toward Landfill Hill at 5:43 pm, the engineer shields his eyes from the brilliant evening sun of January 22nd, 2020 as SD70ACe 8811 ends her westward journey down the 46-mile tangent that began at MP540 just east of Stanton, and ends precisely at MP586 which can be seen in the distance just below a red K-Line container. She’ll glide downhill through the cut and in another half-mile slide under Interstate 20 and head for the second curve another mile or so farther, where the line straightens out again for the desert run to the next outpost of civilization at Monahans.
We're west of Odessa near the ghost town of Penwell, Texas at 11:19 on the perfect morning of December 15th, 2019 and the whine of dynamic braking rides heavy on the West Texas desert wind as SD70ACE 8493 and GE 7229 roll off the caprock escarpment with a solid block of westbound autoracks.
It's 5:07 on January 6th, 2020 as westbound SD70ACe 8405 crawls down through the 4-track set-out yard at Monahans, Texas. A tiny outpost situated in the midst of the booming Permian Basin oilfields, in-bound traffic to Monahans consists of great quantities of frac sand and cement, various diameters of pipe, loaded tank cars of hydrochloric acid and various other chemicals, and empty tank cars for crude oil loading. The track in the foreground is the actual passing siding in Monahans, while the next track over is the old T&P mainline. A mile west of here is the wye and interchange yard with the Texas-New Mexico railroad which will forward a portion of this traffic to on-line customers located in Eunice and Hobbs, NM.
There was once a vast inland sea here, and in that sea thrived living reefs.
The ocean of Panthalassa surrounded the super continent of Pangaea, and an ancient rift now known as the Hovey Channel allowed the sediment to flow out of the region and into the ocean, keeping the water at just the right salinity to form spectacular underwater formations of limestone deposits around the upright-growing Guadalupiidae sponge.
As Pangaea began to break apart and the sea levels began to fall, sedimentation within the basin began to rise, as did the salinity of the water.
And the reefs died.
Water that was not drained from the Permian Basin during the continental breakup eventually evaporated in the hot and arid climate---
250 million years ago.
We’re west of Odessa, Texas at 3:19 on Saturday, December 21st, 2019 as ten-year old ES44AC 7466 rolls westbound tonnage down off the caprock escarpment and across the northern reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert at MP592 of Union Pacific’s Toyah Subdivision.
The red dirt cotton fields at Stanton back to the east have over the last 60 miles gradually transformed into the yucca and mesquite and thornbush desert seen here, dotted with ever-increasing amounts of creosote bush and various species of cactus.
Coyotes and jack rabbits outnumber humans here, and as burros were in the Colorado mining towns, oil pumpjacks are respected citizens of the area.
Man’s quest for energy has allowed them to thrive.
It’s 5:43 pm on December 20th, 2019 at MP549 on Union Pacific’s Toyah Subdivision and there is a certain measure of perfection in the almost-winter western Texas sky as fate has allowed us to stand trackside at the precise coincidence of sundown and a fast eastbound Z-train breasting the grade at Control Point Chub at the east end of Midland, Texas.
'Windswept' would be an appropriate term used to describe Union Pacific's Toyah Subdivision through West Texas. The winds are rarely at rest, and the cloudy Sunday afternoon of December 8th, 2019 is no different as is seen in the range grasses bending to the breeze and a faint cloud of dust forming above the red fields that are now barren of this year's cotton crop. It's 2:20 pm and the clouds have blotted out the sun just west of Stanton, Texas as SD70ACe 8406 leads a westbound double stack down the old T&P mainline and into the Permian Basin.
Grimy SD70ACe 9046 and a sibling bracket a GE motor as the trio rolls a fast westbound manifest across N. Carver Street in Midland, Texas at 11:12 on Friday, December 6th, 2019.
