It was a ghost in the desert. For nearly five decades, if you stood out in the scrubland of Northern Arizona near Page, you might have seen a train that looked like it belonged in a futuristic European suburb rather than the Navajo Nation. It didn't puff smoke. It didn't idle with that deep, chest-rattling diesel thrum. Instead, the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad (BM&LP) hummed. It was a closed-loop, 78-mile long engineering anomaly that moved millions of tons of coal without ever being connected to the national rail grid.
Then, in 2019, the humming stopped.
People who follow trains—the "foamers" and the industrial historians—knew the BM&LP was special. It was the first railroad in the world built specifically to run on 50,000-volt (50 kV) AC power. To put that in perspective, most electric railroads at the time were tinkering with much lower voltages. This was a high-voltage experiment scaled up to a massive industrial level. It existed for one reason: to feed the Navajo Generating Station (NGS). When the power plant died, the railroad died with it.
Why the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad Was an Engineering Freak
You have to understand the geography to get why this thing was so weird. The coal sat at the Kayenta Mine on the Black Mesa plateau. The power plant sat at Page, Arizona, right by Lake Powell. There was no easy way to get the fuel from point A to point B. Trucking it was a logistical nightmare. Building a standard railroad was expensive. So, the owners—primarily Salt River Project (SRP)—decided to build a "private" line.
Since it never left the property or swapped cars with Union Pacific or BNSF, it didn't have to follow the same rules as common carriers. It was an island.
Because it was an island, they could go bold. They chose electrification. Most American railroads hated electrification because the overhead wire (catenary) is expensive to maintain over thousands of miles. But for a 78-mile loop? It was perfect. They used General Electric E60C locomotives. These were massive, boxy, brick-shaped machines that looked like something out of a 1970s sci-fi film. They pulled roughly 122 hopper cars in a single train, making three round trips a day. Each trip took about eight hours.
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The locomotives were actually "automated" in a sense long before AI was a buzzword. While there was usually a human observer on board, the loading and unloading processes were largely handled by electronic sensors and slow-speed control systems. The train would creep under the loading silos at Black Mesa, fill up without stopping, and then crawl over the trestle at the power plant to dump its load into the hoppers. Efficiency was the only metric that mattered.
The 50,000-Volt Secret
Most people think of electricity in terms of the 110V in their wall or maybe the 240V for a dryer. Even the heavy-duty electric trains in the Northeast Corridor usually run at 12.5 kV or 25 kV. The Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad doubled that.
Why? Physics.
Higher voltage allows you to move power over longer distances with less "line loss" (wasted energy). By using 50 kV, the railroad only needed one single substation to power the entire 78-mile line. That is an incredible feat of electrical engineering. It saved millions in infrastructure costs. If they had used standard diesel-electric locomotives, they would have been burning thousands of gallons of fuel every single day in one of the most environmentally sensitive areas of the Southwest. The electric setup was cleaner, quieter, and—once built—significantly cheaper to run.
But it created a problem. Because it was so unique, the parts were bespoke. You couldn't just call up a yard in Chicago and ask for a spare part for an E60C. By the 2000s, these locomotives were aging relics. The railroad eventually had to buy "second-hand" E60s from Mexico (the N de M railroad) just to keep the fleet running. It was a Frankenstein operation toward the end, with crews scavenging parts to keep the coal moving.
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The Day the Power Died
The end of the BM&LP wasn't caused by a mechanical failure. It was caused by economics and the shifting tide of American energy. For decades, coal was king. But then natural gas prices plummeted. Renewables got cheaper. The Navajo Generating Station, once a titan of the desert, became a financial liability for its owners.
The Navajo Nation faced a gut-wrenching choice. The plant and the mine provided hundreds of high-paying jobs for tribal members. But the plant was also a massive source of CO2 emissions. In 2017, the decision was made: the plant would close in 2019.
The final train ran on August 26, 2019.
It was a somber day for the crew. Some of those guys had spent their entire adult lives on that 78-mile stretch of track. They knew every curve, every grade, and every whistle post. When the last load of coal was dumped, the fires in the NGS boilers were allowed to go out. Without the plant, the railroad had zero purpose. There were no other customers. No passengers. Just 78 miles of high-voltage wire and steel stretching across the painted desert to a mine that was also shutting down.
What’s Left of the Line?
If you go out there today, you won't see the "Black Mesa Express" anymore. Almost immediately after the shutdown, the decommissioning process began. This wasn't like those "abandoned" railroads you see in the woods of Georgia where the tracks stay for 50 years. This was high-value scrap and a serious liability.
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The overhead catenary wires—miles and miles of valuable copper—were taken down quickly. The massive GE locomotives? Most were scrapped or sold. Some ended up in museums, but many were simply cut apart for their metal content. The tracks themselves have been largely pulled up in sections.
The landscape is returning to its natural state, or at least a version of it. The "coal road" is becoming a memory. But the legacy of the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad persists in engineering textbooks. It proved that heavy-haul, high-voltage electrification could work in the harshest environments on Earth. It was a proof of concept that, ironically, never saw a "version 2.0" in the United States.
Actionable Insights for History and Rail Enthusiasts
If you're looking to dive deeper into the history of this unique line or want to see what's left, here is how you should approach it.
- Visit the Arizona State Railroad Museum: They hold significant records and artifacts regarding the industrial lines of the Southwest. While the BM&LP was private, its impact on Arizona's industrial history is well-documented there.
- Study the E60C Locomotives: If you're into technical specs, look up the GE E60 series. These were the "muscle cars" of the electric rail world. Understanding their transition from the BM&LP to Amtrak and back to industrial use tells the story of American electric rail's rise and fall.
- Satellite Archaeology: Use Google Earth to trace the old right-of-way. Even though the tracks are gone, the "scar" on the earth from the 78-mile loop is still clearly visible from space. You can follow it from the site of the former Navajo Generating Station (where the stacks were demolished in 2020) all the way to the Kayenta Mine.
- Explore the Navajo Nation’s Energy Transition: The closure of the railroad is a case study in "Just Transition" economics. Researching how the Navajo Nation is now pivoting to massive solar farm projects provides context for why the railroad had to go.
The Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad was a literal lifeline for the region’s economy, but it was also a technical marvel that was decades ahead of its time. It remains a singular chapter in the story of how we moved energy across the American West.