Thursday's BNSF Warm Springs Turn

The BNSF Warm Springs Turn is an interesting train. It originates at the BNSF Richmond terminal in Northern California runs down to Warm Springs in the south bay area near Fremont and returns the same day. It leaves Richmond late in the morning Mon-Fri and perhaps Saturday as well. It’s mainly loaded with autoracks of all different types including articulated and standard. The length varies a lot, and can be thirty cars or longer on occasion.

It ambles over the Siberia Lead to Marina Bay Parkway and uses the Richmond Pacific line to Stege where it runs down the south leg of the wye to the Waterside Drill. About a mile south, at Stege Jct, it will step up onto the UP double track for the run south. Here’s a clip of the train as it runs down “railroad alley” through Berkeley to Emeryville.

Beyond Emeryville, it runs down the UP main past UP’s yard at Oakland and along the street trackage in Jack London Square. The train runs about twenty mile further south to Warm Springs. I’ve never observed it so I can only infer the switching that goes on according to what it brings back.

Train consist coming back to Richmond

The train returns with autoracks and three to five black nondescript 56’ tank cars. It also usually has a shorty tank car lettered for Dupont Ti-Pure. This is an example from Keith B’s collection found on Railroad Picture Archives.

The tank cars are almost always cut into the train at least three cars from the units and the rear of the train, presumably for safety reasons. I saw the returning train from a distance at about 6:30pm leaving the UP track at Stege for the lighter rail of the Waterside track.

The train was much longer on the return trip on Thursday. It had about 12 standard autoracks, 5 boxcars, 6 more standard racks, a half dozen BN and BNSF assorted covered hoppers, 5 more racks and a few tank cars on the end. It looks like they collected cars from the UP at Oakland as well as the usual autorack exchange at Warm Springs.

Warm Springs Power

The train usually has just two units connected long hood to long hood as there appears to be no place to turn the consist en reoute. Units can be any of the following:

• Blue & Yellow GP30’s & 35’s
• H-I GP38’s & B40-8’s
• H-II GP60M’s
• Warbonnet GP60M’s
• BN green SD40-2’s
• BNSF blue and yellow SD40-2’s

Basically, anything you like as long as it’s been around for several years.

The train is easy to model and can simply run from staging, across the switching trackage and onto the UP to staging, returning later in the session with a different set of cars.

Update on Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 7:02PM by Steve Cox

I caught the Warm Springs train returning to Richmond today around 4:30pm confirming that it also runs on Saturday. It had the same pair of units as Thursday - GP60M + B40-8W. The load was light, four or five standard autoracks, a couple of box cars and a tank car.

The train pulled around the south leg of the Richmond wye and pulled down the cutting lead before backing into Richmond Yard. I noticed this the other day as well. I have been more used to seeing trains use the straight lead at the south end of the yard.