Abo Canyon and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway

Producer: WB Video

Locations: Belen, Abo Canyon, Mountainair

Timeframe: 1998

Length: 58 minutes

Source: William Brown.

Abo Canyon is located on the old Santa Fe Chicago to Los Angeles mainline. It has seven bridges. BNSF predecessors and some with original paint.  New BNSF liveries, as well.

The tour begins at the ex: Santa Fe yard in Belen, New Mexico. Circa 1998.

A single DVD-R. Hidden Chapter advance. On screen graphics. Previews. Narration by Tom Jensen.

Videography is solid. Well composed scenes. Natural audio. The narrative is hard panned to one channel or another.

To the Trains…

Belen Yard is briefly seen. Quickly, moves along to the first bridge. The longest of the seven. Double-stack traffic is dominant in this show. The tour on the first half is Eastbound to Mountainair.

Ten locomotives on the over 500 foot long Bridge One. Likely, a power balance move.

Bridge 2 is  on a slight curve. Original Santa Fe scheme on the leader.

Bridge 4 hosts a quadruple set of BN green plus one Blue Santa Fe.

Two different BNSF paint schemes on the point of this double-stack.

BNSF reletters on Santa Fe warbonnets are seen on bridges four and five.

A blue and yellow warbonnet SD45 is on the point of an Intermodal at Bridge Five.

Abo, New Mexico is at milepost 862. BNSF 4924, 4311 in orange and green. Relettered SF Warbonnet 742. Dash 9- 44CW engines with a mixed freight.

Mountainair Depot. A grimy 8205 on a trio with a double-stack train. Turnaround and back towards Belen is next.

Westbounders are next. Similar to first half of this show. Note the black cow, seems oblivious to the passing train above. An untouched Burlington Northern SD40-2 leads.

General Electric C44-9W on the point. All of the pre and post merger paint schemes are present in this lash-up. Bridge six.

Abo Canyon and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway

Extensive coverage of Abo Canyon. This is from both directions. Videography is excellent. The soundtrack is very good. Although the narration is oddly placed, either left or right.

In summary.  This is an out and back tour covering around 15 miles through Abo Canyon. Early enough in the merger years to see a variety of locomotives. Paint ranges from original to the then current BNSF liveries.

A satisfactory program. Script is on the lightweight side. Little in historical background. Mainly, it is power focused, and locations are well documented.

Fine visual coverage of the route.

Rating: 4 Stars