Kansas City Southern on Rich Mountain DVD

The Kansas City Southern line across Rich Mountain astride the Arkansas – Oklahoma border is arguably the toughest mainline grade in the Midwest when both length and gradient are considered.   Trains heading south out of the crew change and refueling stop at Heavener face a five mile, 1.45% climb up Stapp Hill at the base of Rich Mountain, a half a mile breather to Page, then the track climbs thirteen more miles on a gradient of 1.1% to the summit of Rich Mountain. Rich Mountain is part of the Ouachita Mountain range which stretches for nearly 150 miles in an east-west direction from southeastern Oklahoma to Hot Springs in south-central Arkansas. With most of the southbounds being heavy unit trains this is quite a show. And many of the KCS units are in the new heritage paint scheme that railfans refer to as the Southern Belle or retro-belle scheme. This underdog in the land of giants currently uses distributed power on their trains and some have power at three points in the train. This program shows a day and a half of action on and around Rich Mountain in May of 2009.  69 minutes.  The DVD of this program has the option of being watched with or without narration.