MP173 Mudchicken:Is there that much business for UP to maintain the line down to W'burg? You mentioned something about a "hump in Pueblo"...was there once a hump yard there? If so, is there serious consideration about maintaining such a yard? I spent a short period of time in LaJuanta last summer, hoping to spend some time at the depot, but plans didnt allow for it. There seemed to be quite a few trains and lots of auto racks in the yard. Is that a staging area for the Denver-Pueblo traffic? Sounds like Raton Pass might start seeing a little freight. That would be interesting and worth a trip from Indiana. Speaking of Colorado...does BNSF use the rights to Canon City? I know the Santa Fe and Rio Grand were in a battle years ago, but what is the current situation at Canon City. Is it all rock trains out of there?Ed
Mudchicken:Is there that much business for UP to maintain the line down to W'burg?
You mentioned something about a "hump in Pueblo"...was there once a hump yard there? If so, is there serious consideration about maintaining such a yard? I spent a short period of time in LaJuanta last summer, hoping to spend some time at the depot, but plans didnt allow for it. There seemed to be quite a few trains and lots of auto racks in the yard. Is that a staging area for the Denver-Pueblo traffic?
Sounds like Raton Pass might start seeing a little freight. That would be interesting and worth a trip from Indiana.
Speaking of Colorado...does BNSF use the rights to Canon City? I know the Santa Fe and Rio Grand were in a battle years ago, but what is the current situation at Canon City. Is it all rock trains out of there?Ed
Ed: BNSF sold everything west of Canon Junction to RRRR and RGCX in 1998. After the great flood of 1923, the two lines were cobbled together into one joint line with some really complicated tradeoffs between the two railroads, leaving DRGW pretty much in charge of the main (the backtracks are a different story all together) The UP deal with RRRR and RGCX leaves UP an operating corridor, but not what it was. UP is still into CC on a regular basis to feed the power plant and some other minor business (including Tezak rip-rap, etc.) along with keeping its options on Tennessee Pass open....Rock and Rail keeps plenty busy with the big portland cement plant and the local stuff (plus occasional moves of funny reclaimed dirty dirt for Cotter Corp, power plant coal for the cement plant, transloads, etc.)
Pueblo's hump yard died in the early 90's when the Dowty retarders went beyond repair and has been a fixation of some of the operating bubbas for years (I was part of a team that almost put a modernized and simplified version of it back in in '96. The shine wore off after the merger and the Santa Fe couldn't soak BN for the operating costs. The budget to do it right the next time pretty much killed off the empire building at Pueblo. Didn't help much that the flat yard in La Junta, 60 miles away, was far and away more efficient and effective at sorting out cars. (now neither switches much)...The DRGW Yard tower bit the dust here recently next door and I believe every other track in the yard in pretty much gone now.
There is little new industry out that way inbetween Pueblo Yard and Canon City. There was an LP/GP sheet rock plant out at Adobe, but the plant owners shot itself in the foot on that place (expanded the plant and made it geometrically impossible for the railroad(s) to service the buildings)
Southern Junction to Walsenburg is pretty much a wasteland and UP can't get anyone to cover the costs of selling that (it wants to keep access to Vestas and the Commanche Power Plant at Southern Junction). There was the possibility of a ballast quarry at Sandy, but that has been shelved by the speculators pushing that. Access to coal at Trinidad/Jansen no longer makes sense either after that collapsed after only a few test shipments.
I would guess the main reason UP keeps the track thru W'burg and slightly west of there is to controll the interchange with the San Luis & Rio Grande, a line that they spun off.
I heard that BNSF gave up their Canon City rights. IIRC they sold their south CC branch, and the Rockvale branch seems to be used for coal car storage.
MM - Anything is possible and ironically I was told today BNSF has ocassionally started running light, non-DMU/RCE trains over the hill again, often with an AMTK pilot because the local qualified help was MIA a long way from home.
MC, thanks. It sounds like I may have mischaracterized this as a "joint line". It sounds more like 2 seperate lines on the same ROW. I wonder if each RR dispatches its own track.
That's an interesting tidbit on the Trinidad-LaJunta freight traffic. Does that mean they might keep the line, even if they divest Raton Pass?
(1) Both tracks are in-service. UP only goes south to Walsenburg to interchange w/ SL&RG. UP has no other business below Southern Junction. UP(DRGW) owns the track on the geographic west side and BNSF (BN/C&S-FW&D) the east. Each maintains their own track and BNSF cannot interchange w/ SL&RG because of where the division of ownership is west of Walenburg. Technically, UP is the underlying landowner. the UP side is 115 cwr and the BNSF side is mostly 136 cwr.
Not all of the BNSF current of traffic comes back thru Trinidad to Walsenburg. The more priority stuff will come back Trinidad - La Junta. (and patterns change with each new set of operating officials, as does the demands to put the hump back in Pueblo)
The C&S line (Originally D&NO whose original builders intended to go through La Junta instead of Walsenburg, but there was no local business out on the high prairie desert)) is still the "Crooked and Slow" way between Pueblo and Amarillo.
D&RG had its own line to Trinidad from Walsenburg, but it was removed in pieces after 1936 and relied on C&S trackage rights and eventually they gave up the rights to Trinidad after the C&W Southern Division coal was no longer needed at Pueblo (CF&I)...
This is about the ex-C&S/ex-D&RGW (now BNSF/UP) joint line between these two towns. Trains NewsWire today mentions about UP capital spending on this Colorado line. Last time I looked at Google Earth it was still double track. The questions I have: are both tracks in service? Does each RR own one of the tracks? Since this is part of the larger BNSF paired directional trackage between Pueblo and the Texas panhandle, I am suprised it is still double tracked when all but local traffic is one way.
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