The Desert Empire Project: Notes from an outsider...

Monday, October 3, 2016

Notes from an outsider...

Being a relative newcomer to the Utah rail scene, I haven't got a lot to offer in the way of insight or retrospect on the way things used to be. I can however, provide a glimpse into the present through the lens of a traveler from the great state of Nevada. I neither claim to know what is what nor do I want to step on any toes by providing misinformation, so my first post to this blog will simply be a photo presentation of my last several trips to the Salt Lake City region of the Beehive State.

First, a little background on my visits to Utah. About a year ago, I first visited the University of Utah Clinical Neurosciences Center to determine a cause and course of treatment for an issue I was dealing with. On my first several visits, I strictly came into town, visited the clinic, stayed overnight, shopped at Sam's Club and/or Walmart then left. I neither had the time or the knowledge to really railfan the area. Or so I thought. Then February rolled around and I had surgery to fix the issue we had pinpointed. I knew that I would be visiting the area guaranteed for the next two years for follow-ups so I invested in a better digital camera and began to plan my trips around my appointments and whatever railfan time I could get in. I arranged to meet with Chris Fussell and James Belmont, both of whom welcomed me with open arms and showed me some of the easier popular locations within Salt Lake City proper to shoot trains. Since then, I have returned to Ogden after an 11 year absence and have also visited Echo, which I definitely plan to return to in the future. What follows is a selection of my photos from these locations. In the future I hope to be able to provide a more in-depth look at my photos as I gain more knowledge of operations in the Utah arena.