Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to walk along the bridge over the Belen Railyard in New Mexico. This is a BNSF hub, and it is quite an impressive place. I’ve been here many times, but never had I walked across the bridge.
This particular day, there were no trains during my brief stay there. Well, no trains, except the commuter train that I boarded to head back to Albuquerque.
The Belen Railyard has always been a neat place to me, personally. When JoAnna and I first started dating, we’d go watch trains in Socorro together and walk along the tracks. That’s not really allowed anymore, but we did it back then. We also used to stop in Belen and watch the (much more frequent) trains in Belen.
I once heard that the line through Socorro was a six train a day line. The Belen station was 90 trains a day. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but one of the railroad employees told us that, back in 2006 or so.
I will take some more photos of this yard. I just snapped this one with my cell phone. This isn’t the yard, but rather some of the switching complex before entering the yard. It branches off into many more tracks on the other side of the bridge, but, when I was there, that was looking directly into the sun.
The rail to the right that is separate from the rest of the line is the NM Railrunner, the commuter line that I take back to Albuquerque.
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