I am riding westbound on the southwest chief, at right before the MO River bridge and the BNSF transcon at Sibley MO it looked like on the south side of the tracks there were a number of bright lights directed right at the passing trains from a RR utility tower…
If you want to see it I believe the coordinates for Google Earth are: 39.189137° -94.172056°
What is the purpose of that? I’ve never seen anything like that.
That’s at the western end of a siding or double-track segment, where there’s a turnout to single track before it curves to the southwest to cross the bridge, which includes a couple of through-truss spans. Looks like the south side only, where there’s an unpaved access drive. Wonder if there are any photos of it available on-line ?
A guess is to facilitate ‘roll-by inspections’ of the train, by either carmen on the ground there, the train crew, and/ or video camera at a remote location, for shifted loads, open doors, derailed wheels, or other mechanical defects, etc. That would always be important, but especially so here to prevent serious damage to the superstructure of the bridge. But some of that is now being done by scanners which provide their own light source (lasers), and so would not need so much visible light. Perhaps this installation pre-dates that technology, or it hasn’t been installed here yet. But I don’t understand why not on the north side, too.
Perhaps someone who has access to a BNSF Employee Time Table or other ‘inside information’ will be able to tell us.
Perhaps since it’s close to the Missouri River bridge it’s for MOW forces to work at night for flood prep work. We’ve had 24 hour Form B work zones at or near Mo Valley and Council Bluffs for about a week. They are using portable lighting equipment to light up some areas were work is going on.
Jeff