Charlie Kirk Shooting

Utah Valley University

From The Guardian. Charlie Kirk was standing in the University Quad (lower right end of red line). Shooter was on the roof of the Losee Center (upper left end of the red line), 400 feet away.

I wrote this a couple of months ago, but I didn't really have anything to add that hadn't already been all over the net. so I didn't post it. Before this happened I had never heard of Charlie Kirk or Turning Point USA.

Then today I am skipping through the archives and found a four-year-old post that included a video from Turning Point USA. I guess I have heard of them.

Hercules Explosives

This abandoned shed may yet help end the world
CGP Grey

Slick little video that gives us a brief history of the Hercules company and their solid rocket motor test facility in Utah.

Did We Make The Bombi Too Powerful? Massive LS Engine Barely Fits.

One of Matt's best videos. Plenty of mechanics antics, a touch of blatant commercialism, and some unusual sidelights.

Bootlegger Train Tunnel Utah

Potash Evaporation Ponds, Moab, Utah

A view of these ponds showed up in my screensaver, and so I thought I'd see if I could locate it on the map. I found it, but then I notice a portal to a train tunnel, so I go digging some more and I found this on Train Sim World 3:

By American railroad standards, the Cane Creek Branch is a newcomer. In the late 1950s, plans took form to tap massive potash deposits found along the Colorado River in eastern Utah. By 1960, development of what would evolve into today’s sprawling potash mine and processing facility south of Moab and near Cane Creek were rapidly taking form, and the Denver & Rio Grande Western agreed to build a new branch from its main line at Brendel. Grading and construction of the new branch line was contracted to Morrison-Knudsen and work began in August 1961. Morrison-Knudsen completed its work in September 1962 and D&RGW crews moved in to lay the tracks.

The potash mine and facility at the south end of the line began production in late 1964 and the branch was operated by D&RGW as its Cane Creek Branch until the road’s merger into Union Pacific (D&RGW was combined with the Southern Pacific in 1988 and merged into Union Pacific in 1996). While there have been fluctuations in the amounts of potash being moved over the Cane Creek Branch, it has been in nearly continuous use since the 1960s.

Remarkably, the Cane Creek line gained a second purpose – and source of extensive tonnage – in 2008. Moab had long been the site of a Uranium mill which closed in 1984, leaving approximately 12 million tons of dirt tailings behind. While these tailings are only modestly radioactive, the risk of their erosion into the nearby Colorado River required eventually reclamation. Under the auspices of the United States Department of Energy, a burial site for the tailings was developed at Brendel and train loads of the contaminated soil began moving over the length of the Cane Creek Subdivision to Brendel. These unusual rail movements, nicknamed “the dirty dirt trains,” are expected to continue until approximately 2028. Given that both the potash and contaminated soil tonnage involves carrying loads northbound, the climb from Potash and Moab to Brendel requires plenty of horsepower.

Bootlegger Train Tunnel Utah

Train Entering North Portal of Potash Tunnel

Cut near South Portal of Potash Tunnel

Crescent Junction Disposal Cell

Cane Creek Branch from Brendel to Moab

Blackhawk Helicopter Crash

Two Black Hawk helicopters crash at Snowbird resort
BYU Universe
Two Black Hawk helicopters from the Utah Army National Guard crashed at Snowbird’s Mineral Basin. No serious injuries were reported.

One of the crashed helicopters

Video via FlightAware and Unofficial Networks

Update January 2026 replaced missing video. Aviation Safety Network has the results of the investigation.

Let's Go For A Drive

Swallowed by SINKHOLE!!
Matt's Off Road Recovery
I've watched a couple of these videos and enjoyed them thoroughly. This one has the bonus of a long musical introduction. Another video I saw had more spectacular scenery and a more complicated recovery, but the problems with the 'road' were obvious. Here, the road collapsed from underneath as the Jeep drove over it.

Railroads!

Completing the Transcontinental Railroad

The Orthosphere tells us that today marks the 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Vunderbar! But then he mentions that "While railroads in the sense of wheeled carts rolling on tracks have existed since antiquity . . .", which sends me on a Wiki-wander, which turns up an ancient railroad, or sorts, in ancient Greece.

Diolkos - Ancient road for transporting ships across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece

Map showing location of the Diolkos railway in Greece

The 5 mile long roadway was a rudimentary form of railway, and operated from c. 600 BC until the middle of the 1st century AD. - Wikipedia

Going from one side of the Isthmus by sea would entail a 500 mile voyage which you might be able to complete in a day but could very easily take a week.

Local Sunrise

UTAH TRAIN DERAIL
A freight train derailed in Utah recently.

state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, decided to blow up a dozen Union Pacific propane tankers that had derailed, as the safest way to deal with them, and clear the railroad, so it can get repaired and back in business

That is a heck of a lot of propane going up in smoke. Talk about a blaze of glory.

Yes, I know, everyone is talking about the Black Hole [tm]. That they were able to make an image out of all the random radio noise in the universe is pretty cool, but until we get get established in the space faring business, I don't care about no stinking black holes.

Oil Sands: Canada-, Utah+

Crown Asphalt Ridge LLC (Sept 2012)

There is a big oil sands operation in Canada. They were getting large quantities of oil out of the ground, but it was kind of a crazy operation. They were using heat to separate the oil from the sand, and they were burning oil to get that heat. It took so much oil to generate the heat they needed that it only paid when the price of oil was high. Since the price of oil has collapsed (what caused that anyway?) the Canadian operations are no longer viable and may already have been shut down.
    Meanwhile there is a small plant in Utah that is using a solvent instead of heat to separate the oil from the sand. They recycle the solvent so it seems like a better solution all around. It's a proprietary technology. It's still kind of new. People are going to want to see how well these pilot projects pan out before they go jumping in with both feet.

Deseret Power Railway

Driving back from Denver my route took me through Northwest Colorado. Going North on State Highway 139 towards Dinosaur National Monument I noticed what appeared to be a new railroad. It wasn't hard to notice because other than sagebrush, a few cows and the occasional gas pipeline station, there wasn't anything else out there. What's more, it appeared to be an electric railroad. There were wires strung above the tracks just like for the local commuter train here in Portland. Well, that's just downright bizarre. I didn't see a train or even any cars, just this track. Why would someone build an electric railroad all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?

I finally got around to looking it up. It was built for one purpose only: to haul coal from the Deserado Mine northeast of Rangely, Colorado to the Bonanza Power Plant 35 miles away in Utah. The train is fairly short, only 44 cars. Right now the train makes one trip a day, five days a week, and that's enough coal to keep the turbines spinning.

This railway is not connected to any others, so everything for this project (the mine, the power plant, the train and its' track) had to be hauled in by truck.

This mine is an underground mine, so there isn't much to see up top, except for the 3 mile long conveyor belt that carries the coal from the mine to the train load point. The big mines in the Powder River Basin, the ones that supply low sulfur coal to the Midwest and the East Coast, are strip mines.

Desert Power Railway

Update January 2021 replaced missing map.