Snarling up the steep grade from Pica, BNSF 7817 leads a 4+1 manifest towards Yampai summit just around the bend, after which it will be downgrade to Needles. Dispatching lore has it that whatever speed a westbound managed over this grade, it would make from Needles to Goffs. That was important information in figuring where your trains were going to be in the days before CTC, and when the first class closed up in nothing flat. On UP, whatever time it took an eastbound to run from East Riverdale (Ogden) to Echo was equal to the time from there to the Wahsatch annunciator. Worked like a charm. ES44s seem to be the new rulers of the Transcon. As with about every other stop I made through NM and AZ, a two to three hour stop yielded 13 trains.
