Magma Arizona Railroad

The Narrow Gauge Route

This segment starts up around MP 27 just outside of Superior. I picked up traces of the grade just south of Silver King Wash as it heads up onto the mesa. Picketpost Mountain can be seen to the right as we walking along this ballast covered section of the grade.

The grade starts to curve towards the east and will head into a tight loop a little further up.



Apache Leap comes into view beyond the trees as we make our short jaunt to the east. There are many new roads up on the mesa in the distance that cross over the abandoned grade.



What I found interesting up here is that the trees seem to prefer the grade with either side being void of trees. It made the grade easy to spot in the aerial photos. We also get a good view of Apache Leap in the background.



There really is a grade there with the occasional spike found even with the heavy weekend use of this area.



A small washout is found as the grade curves back towards the south.



The grade continues heading south towards the edge of the mesa where it will make decent down into Superior.



Quite a bit of the loop has been obscured by recent roads so I picked up the grade towards the end of the loop as it start the decent down off of the mesa. This view is to the northeast with the Silver King Mine high in the mountains to the right.



This view looking east from the grade provides the first glimpse of Superior at the right. The grade will eventually make its way down in front of the power substation beyond the forest road.



I counted a total of 8 military helicopters as they flew over in a staggered formation heading to the southeast.



Coming down off of the mesa the grade is pretty overgrown but it does open up in spots.



The heavy overgrowth of the last 90 years make it difficult to photograph any long stretches of this road.



After curving back to the east we run into a stream crossing that would have required a fairly high trestle. This will be the end of this segment as we head back to pick up the grade from the road on the other side.



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