ATSF Scale House

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 11: And now for something completely different; The Santa Fe scale house   

 

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I've been working on the railroad. Maybe not all the live long day, but I had a hankering for a chance to do some model building for a change, and this led me down a small rabbit hole in pursuit of a very small building. A scale house to be exact. Specifically the one that I know existed in the Santa Fe Springs yard as late as 1981, and so very much present in my modeling era.

 

  The Santa Fe Springs yard looking north, showing the scale and south end of the scale house,

with the old freight house and the depot beyond. Notice that the scale is on a slight hump, 

so that cars that have been weighed could be kicked down the track out of the way

 

And the return view looking south showing the north end of the house. Note the gantlet track.

 The live rails are to the right, closest to the house, with the balance beam in a pit beneath. 

The outer rails are fixed to support the locomotive.

Both Larry Green, November 1973

(click images to enlarge) 

 

 

 

  The view looking south in 1981 showing how the tracks squiggled around the scale house. 

The cars at right are on the old freight house track. 

This is the only dead-on elevation of the scale house that I had to work with.

In my effort to fold, spindle and mutilate the truncated Santa Fe Springs yard to shoehorn it into a corner of the layout it became apparent that the ATSF track scale just wasn't going to fit where it should. No matter how many times I drew out the tracks and turnouts full size or redrew them there was just no way three double-ended yard tracks and the scale were going to fit properly in the allotted space and look right. You see, the scale house required a three track wide space in between two tracks, which had to wiggle to go around it, so one of the yard tracks would have to go entirely, or at least be truncated to the point of being near useless, and that just wouldn't do. As much as it would be nice to have a scale for simulating weighing outbound loads, having three functioning yard tracks was way more important.

And so I set aside the thought of including the scale. Or so I thought. There was the possibility to at least include the scale and house visually on the layout by placing it at the far end of the north yard lead against the wall. True, it would not be possible to actually spot even a single car on the scale for weighing, never mind work an entire cut, but at least it would be present, just not where it should be. And there was the rub. It didn't look right, and it didn't feel right. And so the thought was pushed to back of mind, right were it could niggle away and make itself felt every time I looked at a photo of the yard with the scale house right there just south of the old freight house.

 

Grrrr.

 

Then one day just a week or so back, I was once again looking at one of those photos and it hit me, if subtly. If I flipped the photo left to right it would look a lot like the scene might look on the layout, with the scale house up at the northern end of the freight house. And if I rearranged the turnouts it would even mimic at least some of the track wiggle to get around it.

 

    The view flipped showing how the scene just might work after all

 

Hmmm. Niggle, niggle.

 

Out came the pencil, eraser, straight edge, turnouts and curve templates. Move the turnout connecting track 3 to track 2 to the north, and the turnout connecting track 1 to track 2 to the south, swapping them in the ladder, and voila: there was the wide space needed between the freight house track and track 2 to fit the scale and house, there was the "wiggle" as track 3 segued into track 2. And the scale would fit in the tail of track 2, the lead/escape track, and thus become functional for at least one car, while the continuation of track 1 would become just a slightly longer engine tie-up and service track. 

Hmmm. The niggle subsided, not entirely, but substantially. Perhaps I could live with this after all.

 

    And the scene mocked up on the full-size layout plan, with the old freight house track at left, 

the scale house between it and track 2 and in line with track 3, and track 1 at right, 

which extends into the locomotive tie-up and service track. The track 2 tail lead is just 

long enough to fit the scale, so weighing single cars can be simulated

 

With the hook set, I tentatively moved on to researching the scale and house. I already had three good photos of the scale house, and I found a few decent photos of other Santa Fe examples on line, so this obviously was a standard design. I also found a drawing of a Pennsy standard "beam cupboard", which was almost identical, just a little more ornate. Perhaps the design originated with the scale manufacturer, probably Fairbanks Morse. Unfortunately the drawing was too low res to read the dimensions, but at least I could use the proportions to work out the Santa Fe house.

 

I had one good dead-on b&w elevation photo of the north, or window end of the scale house. I brought that into Photoshop, flipped it horizontally, and began to recreate the south end of the house with a door instead of a window. I've been using Photoshop since 1993 and can draw with it almost as easily as I can in CAD, so it was short work. Next, I used the north end window to recreate the paired bay windows in the east wall. I already had the one angled bay wall and window, which I duplicated and flipped, completing the east wall. The back, or west wall was blank, except for a small door for filling the coal bin for the stove that kept the balance mechanism warm and true. The last step was adding a simple outline roof.

About this time I noticed that there was a scale bar in the Pennsy drawing, meaning I could work out the major dimensions reasonably closely. I made a new crisp scale bar and used it first on the Pennsy house, then on the Santa Fe house. They matched almost exactly. This was going to work.

I adjusted my drawing as required, and then cleaned up the windows and siding and added some of the finer details, such as the rafter tips. Finally, I colorised it standard Santa Fe cream or buff with a red asphalt roof to match the photos. Here's the result:

Having already built the model in 2D, I'm confident that I got the proportions and dimensions close enough that I plan to proceed with scratch building the 3D model without doing a CAD or even a pencil drawing. Next step will be figuring out if there is a Grandt or Tichy window that matches or is adaptable, and seeing which Evergreen siding will work best.

I'll report back as the project moves along.

 

Until next time.

Freight Trains and Traffic

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 10: Freight Trains and Traffic on the Joint Line

 

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Last time we took a brief look at unit coal trains on the Joint Line in the late 1970s, this time we’ll do an overview of general freight train traffic of the era. 

 

Three way meet in Colorado Springs 

A Santa Fe train waits in the Colorado Springs CTC siding for a southbound Rio Grande coal 

train to pass before continuing north. Meanwhile, Rock Island Train 51 holds short of the junction 

for the Santa Fe to vacate the siding so that it can enter Colorado Springs yard to do its work.

Larry Green, April 1978

(click images to enlarge) 

 

Although the Joint Line was an important freight route for all of the roads that operated on the line–the Rio Grande, the Santa Fe, and the Colorado & Southern/BN alike, traffic in terms of trains per day was relatively modest for any one of them. Typically each road carded only two pairs of freight trains a day on the line. That doesn’t sound very busy, but multiplied times three it totals 12 trains per day, which would pretty much fill my two staging yards all by themselves, never mind coal trains and extras. That total is going to have to be dialled down a bit to fit the layout.

 

So who ran what, what did those trains carry, and which trains need to be prioritized to support operations on the layout? And what kind of cars and motive power were typical for those trains.

 

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D&RGW GP40 3089 leads a pair of GP30s, a GP35 and another ‘40 southbound as the train 

ducks under Fillmore Street on the north side of Colorado Springs. Four-axle power was typical 

of Rio Grande freights on the Joint Line, although SD45s and SD40T-2s could be mixed in at times, 

as could older GP9s and SD9s as they cycled through the Rio Grande’s Burnham diesel shop in Denver. 

Robert Harmen, 1976 

 

Rio Grande Trains

65 – 66

67 – 68

Denver is where the Rio Grande was born, and its original mainline first headed south to Pueblo. In Denver the Rio Grande interchanged freight traffic with the AT&SF, CB&Q/BN, C&S/BN, CRI&P and UP. In Pueblo, where the railroad finally turned compass west for the Royal Gorge and Tennessee Pass, the Grande interchanged with the AT&SF, C&S, and MP. Of those roads, the CB&Q/BN, RI and MP generated the most interchange traffic for the Grande, but after the Moffat Tunnel was bored most of the CB&Q/BN and RI through traffic ran directly west, leaving the Joint Line as the Mopac’s conduit to Denver and the Grande’s gateway to/from the lower Midwest and the Southeast. Overhead traffic off the Mopac to Denver included a bit of set-up autos and TOFC, food stuffs, beer, paper, manufactured and consumer goods, mostly terminating in Denver.

Add to that a healthy volume of traffic originating on the Rio Grande proper to the south and west of Pueblo, including steel and rail produced at the sprawling Colorado Fuel & Iron mill on the southern edge of Pueblo, iron ore and scrap loads heading to CF&I, cement out of Portland on the Royal Gorge route, barley for Coors in Golden along with perlite, spuds, fertilizer, and a bit of forest products in and out of the San Louis Valley, and various other metallic and mineral concentrate loads. There was also a bit of lumber off the SP that ran via Pueblo to be interchanged to the RI in Colorado Springs. Southbound non-unit train cuts of coal off the Craig Branch went to the CSDPU Martin Drake power plant in downtown Colorado Springs as well. 

 

A Rio Grande northbound with hot auto and pig traffic off the Mopac cruises through 

Colorado Springs without stopping today, the cooling battery of the Martin Drake 

power plant steaming away in the distance. 

Larry Green, April 1978

Rio Grande trains linking Denver and Pueblo to handle this traffic were 65/66 and 67/68, with the odd numbers being south (west) bounds, the even north (east) bounds. Actually, you would normally see these trains referred to as 165/166 and 167/168, where the leading 1 indicates the “first” train of that number running on any particular day of the month, which was appended at the end, as in 165-21, indicating First 65 on the 21st day of the month. Occasionally a 265 train could be called to run the Joint Line, but not often.

Trains 65/66 were normally daytime runs, with 67/68 carded late evenings or very early mornings. Both train pairs could make set-outs and pick-ups at Springs yard for the local switch job to work, meaning all four model-size trains will be needed to feed operations on the layout, so four staging tracks are reserved for them. Let’s say start an operating session with an early morning 168 setting out cars to be worked that day and pick up Denver bound empties; a mid-morning 166 to set out the RI interchange block and pick up empty Drake coal hoppers; an afternoon 165 to set out Drake coal loads and pick up southbound RI interchange; with 167 running clean up at the end of the day to set-out loads and pick up Pueblo bound empties. This would balance and spread feeding cars to the yard and lifting empties across the session, keeping the yard fluid.

Mainstay power for these trains was generally GP40s, GP40-2s and GP30s, with SD40T-2s and SD45s mixed in on heavier trains as needed.

 Southbound D&RGW 3016 and four EMD mates motor past the north end of Kelker siding

Robert Harmen, 1975

 

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Santa Fe U23B 6317 heads up two GP38s and a green BN SD40-2 on Train 314 just about 

a mile north of the Colorado Springs crossovers, indicated by the faded Rock Island JCT sign 

atop the white post at left beside the Rock's weed-grown tack. Note the Santa Fe Trails 

International Transtar COE with two pup trailers on parallel I-25.

Larry Green, June 1976

 

Santa Fe Trains
314 – 414
495 – 594
194

Circa 1978-79 Santa Fe carded two pairs of freight trains a day on the Joint Line, plus a nocturnal intermodal TOFC train from Chicago to Denver with no eastbound counterpart. Santa Fe’s train numbers consisted of three digits, with the first digit indicating the origin region, the second train type, the third the destination region. Trains 314/414 were general freights handling traffic between Kansas City (3) and Denver (4) via La Junta (4) and return to LJ, located south and east of Pueblo on the trans-con passenger main over Raton Pass. These trains tended to run mainly with 4-axle EMD and GE power, typically GP39-2s, GP38s and U23Bs, but almost any power could be seen at times. Both trains set-out and picked-up in the Springs, so they are must-haves. Two more staging tracks assigned.

 ATSF C-30-7 8054 and another C-boat bracketing an F45 power Train 594 north onto the single track at Crews. 

 These Texas trains typically drew 6-axle power, and often ran north with just two units as far as La Junta or Pueblo, 

 where another 6-motor would be added to make the grade to Palmer Lake.  Widefield Supply lumber yard 

is on the left, further left out of the view is Springs Gas, which I moved north to Kelker-Drennen on the layout.

 Larry Green, August 1979

Trains 495/594 handled traffic between Texas (5) and Denver (4) via the Boise City sub and La Junta. Traffic included grain, fertilizer, petrochemicals, plastics, and general freight. These were heavier trains and tended to run with 6-axle power, typically pairs of SD45s and U33Cs, often with SD39s from the Raton helper pool added in La Junta or Pueblo to get the trains up and over Palmer Lake summit, so they clearly had a different character. This train pair did no work in the Springs, plus one or the other often ran in darkness, so I only need to model one of them to feature their character. Figure run 594 north one session, then south as 495 the next. There’s another staging track spoken for.

 A very late Train 194 makes a rare daylight appearance as it snakes through the S curves near Monument on its way to Big Lift.

Larry Green, May 1979

Chicago-Denver TOFC train 194 was carded to arrive in the wee morning hours at Santa Fe’s Big Lift intermodal terminal to ground the vans for delivery in the morning. Big Lift, which opened in 1976, was located between the paired main tracks in Sedalia, well south of Denver’s rail and highway congestion. Needless to say, 194 almost always ran right through the Springs without stopping, and in darkness to boot, so, much as I like modeling vintage 1970s pig trailers and flats, there’s no real reason to run the train in my regular operating schedule, only on rare occasion to scratch that itch. 

 

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Southbound BN train 78 with three SD40-2s and an F45 has taken the Colorado Springs siding for a meet.

Larry Green, circa 1978

 

Colorado & Southern / Burlington Northern Trains
C&S 151 – 152
BN 77 – 78

 

As a tenant of the Santa Fe, C&S/BN ran only overhead traffic over the Joint Line, as although it did own trackage in the Springs, Santa Fe handled their cars and switched them for C&S. In fact, Santa Fe ran all C&S/BN trains over the Joint Line using Santa Fe crews. Often light Santa Fe and C&S tonnage would even be combined into a single train powered by pooled Santa Fe and C&S power, frequently using a pair of vintage C&S SD9s, with much grumbling from the Santa Fe engine crews. 

 

Usually this pooling involved C&S trains 151/152 [odd north (west), even south (east)], which were long range locals that plied the C&S and FW&D between Denver and Fort Worth handling all on-line traffic along the way, including grain from Cargill in Denver, Coors beer or returning empties, oilfield pipe, bentonite clay for drilling mud, iron ore for CF&I, and company stone ballast for use south of Pueblo.

 BN long distance train 77 between Texas and the Pacific Northwest runs through Colorado Springs

led by a U33C, a U25C or U28C, and a U30C. Right behind the power is a 60-foot flat with a tall 

Boeing aircaft subassembly load, an occasional sight on the Joint Line. 

Larry Green, April 1978

BN 77/78 were long distance trains handling traffic between Seattle and the Pacific Northwest and Dallas/Ft. Worth and on to Houston, including lumber and plywood, kraft paper, import automobiles, Boeing aircraft parts, and more grain. Power on C&S/BN trains was mainly 6-axle EMD and GE units. Think SD40s and '40-2s, SD45s, F45s, U30Cs and U33Cs.

Except for when a train was combined with a Santa Fe manifest, C&S and BN trains didn’t stop to work the Springs, so they are not strictly necessary to operate the layout, but they certainly add a distinct character. Again, only one or two need be modeled to capture the flavor. One or two more tracks spoken for.

 

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Eastbound Rock Island Train 50 on a cold day in 1973 just departing Roswell. Obviously the U33B had 

encountered deeply drifted snow that morning on its run west with train 51. The lead wallboard load 

and some of the SP lumber cars will be set out in the industrial park just ahead, the rest of the train 

will continue to Limon for forwarding further east.

 

 Rock Island Trains

50 – 51 

 

Last up, the RI ran a daily turn into the Springs from Limon, located 77 miles to the east on the high plains where the Rock Island crossed the UP’s Kansas Pacific line to Denver. The Rock had overhead trackage rights over the UP to run their mainline traffic to Denver and thence into the Rio Grande’s North Yard, but RI daily turn trains 50/51 handled cars destined for the Springs and points south, arriving mid-day to exchange cars and work its customers. The Rock had quite a few to switch in an industrial park on the north side of the Springs in Roswell (a future layout expansion?), and also had direct or reciprocal access to a few served by the Rio Grande and Santa Fe. Interchange traffic to/from the south included lumber and building products, scrap metal, perlite loads for Johns Manville, and zinc concentrate from the NJ Zinc Eagle mine and mill at Belden on the west side of Tennessee Pass.

RI power on the line from Limon was restricted to 4-axle locomotives—usually a single or pair of anything from GP18s or rebuilt GP7s to older GEs, GP40s or the newest GP38-2s, guaranteeing a colorful lashup most days. 

 

On a warmer day in 1977 a Rock Island U28B tows Train 50’s short consist up the stiff grade out of 

Colorado Springs to return to Limon. The two empty bulkhead flats could have brought in gypsum wall board, 

the USLX Evans box hardboard panelling, the two 40-footers may have carried brick.

The three 2970 cuft Center Flows probably carry loads of zinc concentrate, bound for NJ Zinc’s refinery in New Jersey 

on the old Erie Lackawanna. A blue Rock boxcar and a red & yellow bay window caboose bring up the rear.

Larry Green, June 1977

 

The Rock Island turn is an obvious must-have, and it has its own staging track on the layout east of Roswell so it doesn’t take up space in the main staging yards. That said the Rock also ran occasional detours over the Joint Line to Denver when ever the UP line was blocked or out of service for some reason. I know this happened in 1978 when UP was replacing a bridge on the KP, for example. Any extra train like that would run into Springs yard, swap power and caboose end for end, take on a Rio Grande crew or pilot, and then run north to Denver, so it would require an open staging track to tie up in.

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So, that establishes the number of trains needed to support operations on the layout at a minimum of eight, plus two coal trains, plus room for a couple extra trains for variety, leaving at least one open track in each of the two staging yards representing Denver and Pueblo at the start of an ops session. All fourteen staging tracks accounted for.

Until next time

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Speaking of unit coal trains

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 9: Speaking of unit coal trains

 

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Southbound BN train 62, a PSCX loads with Locotrol mid-train remote helpers,

is about to duck under Fillmore Street in Colorado Springs. 

These cars were built by Darby, but PSC also had cars built by Thrall.
Robert Harmen, 1975

 

As I wrote last time, in the late 1970s unit coal trains were a key feature of the Joint Line, including BN trains originating in the Powder River coal field headed south to Texas, along with Rio Grande trains originating on the Craig Branch.

Here's a list of unit trains that could be seen at various times on the Joint Line in my 1978-1979 era and into the early 1980s. You can see why the Powder River coal traffic was often described as a "flood," and this is just on one route!

The trains that I will be modeling are in bold.

 

BN

 

FPPX —     Fayette Power Project, La Grange, TX

08/09        dark green Pullman or Evans-SIECO gons with yellow rotary end; run through MKT SD40-2s

                    Athearn has done their very similar Thrall in FPPX

 

PSCX —    Public Service Co. of Colorado, Comanche Plant, Pueblo, CO

62/63         Darby or Thrall gons with red rotary end; Athearn has done the Thralls

 

 

RTPX —    Southwest Public Service, Tolk Station, Muleshoe, TX

                    Wheelabrator Coal Services ACF bathtub gons with white rotary end; ATSF pool power; Atlas has done them

 

SATX —    Public Service Board of San Antonio, Elmendorf, TX

92/93        Thrall gons with red rotary end; run through SP GE units; Athearn has done them

 

 

SDEX —    Southwest Public Service, Harrington Station, Amarillo, TX

02/03        Swindell-Dressler Ortner and Pullman rapid discharge hoppers; Athearn has done the Ortners

 

 

UFIX —    Houston Power & Light, Smithers Lake, TX

50/51         Utility Fuels Inc. Berwick or ACF bathtub gons with orange rotary end; Athearn has done the Berwicks, Atlas has done the ACFs

  

Southbound BN train 50, a UFIX loads bound for HP&L, 

crossing Monument Creek in the Springs.
Larry Green, 1979

 

BN Coal —  Bethlehem and Pullman 4000 cuft triple hoppers with white rotary end; Walthers has done the Beths, 

                     Tangent has done the Pullmans

 

BN Ore —   taconite train from Iron Range to CF&I, Pueblo, CO

                     BN and predecessor ore hoppers

 

Southbound BN train of Iron Range taconite headed for CF&I in Pueblo

 runs past the Springs yard

Robert Harmen, 1977

 

D&RGW

 

C&IM —   Illinois Power, Federal, IL

711/712      Mix of D&RGW and MP Bethehem quad hoppers; occasional run through MP SD40-2s to Denver; ExactRail has done the quads

  

CCTX —    Central Power & Light, Coleto Creek, TX

707/708    unique FMC bathtub gons with light blue rotary end

 

CELX —    Celanese Corp. co-gen plant, Kings Mill, TX

725/726    ex-SSIX Richmond Tank Car rapid discharge hoppers, later mixed with C&W, IPSX, MIDX and ex-NASX Ortners

 

CSUX —   City of Colorado Springs Dept. of Public Utilities, Nixon Plant, Fountain, CO

709/710    Ortner rapid discharge hoppers with billboard yellow CSDPU; Athearn has done them in original CSDPU and the later CSDU

 

 

UP Ore —  iron ore train from Cedar City, UT to CF&I, Pueblo, CO

774/775     mix of UP ore gons and hoppers

 

Southbound D&RGW train 774 handled iron ore off the UP headed for CF&I in Pueblo

 

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Adding unit coal train car set storage tracks

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 8: Adding unit coal train car set storage tracks

 

There's a saying among owners of layouts built for operation: 

you can never have too many staging tracks.

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In the late 1970s unit coal trains became a signature feature of the Joint Line, including BN trains originating in the Powder River coal field headed south to Texas, along with Rio Grande trains originating on the Craig Branch.

The problem is those unit coal trains won't do any work on my layout, they will just run through. I do need to model a few of them to simulate their presence on the line, but only just. I figure 3-4 max will be enough to suggest the traffic and variety in the car sets that could be seen then.

The catch is I only have room for so many staging tracks, six in the north yard, six in the south, and not every one of those coal trains runs on any given day and therefore in any operating session, meaning idle coal trains would just eat up staging tracks that could be used for other trains.

So what to do about that? Well, I could rotate unneeded train sets off the layout by hand, and then put them back on when needed, but that will get old fast, plus it risks damage to the cars and finish from being handled repeatedly.

I have read about other layout owners facing the same or similar situation adding extra staging or storage tracks to existing layouts by shoehorning them into unused space under the sceniced layout deck after the fact. This sounded like the ideal solution to the problem, and since I'm still in the benchwork phase of building my own layout, now would be the time to do it with the least pain.

Thanks to a couple of rainy days I managed to steal some indoor time from summer outdoor activities to work on the layout and used it to fit in the roadbed for three stub-end storage tracks for unit coal train car sets.

Out came the cantilevered plywood staging yard supports one at a time so that I could notch each out beneath the north, or Denver, staging yard to clear the storage yard, which will tie into the throat of the south, or Pueblo, staging yard.

Three half day work sessions later the supports are all back in along with the sub roadbed. And since I was able to reuse materials from the last iteration of my Joint Line layout, it didn't require any new funds from my hobby budget.

Win - win.

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Laying out Kelker-Drennan

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 7: Laying out the last major section of the layout: Kelker-Drennan

 

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It’s Summer, and work on the layout has slowed to a crawl, but I was on a roll this past Spring, maybe even a tear. I think it was because the final stage of the planning process, the full-size ground truth check, was nearing its end. I was itching to get back to work on benchwork now that I knew the final deck levels and lay of the land that I will be modeling and what will fit comfortably. Finally I will be able to press on with laying track at long last. But that will have to wait until Fall and the return of indoor activity time, so let’s wrap this up so I will be ready to get back down in the basement.

 

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My layout room is L-shaped (layout plan), with a longer south wall where Kelker-Drennan will be located. From the edge of the Transit Mix area to the end of the L is 17’ 9”. The left 2 feet of that is reserved for the wooded Shook’s Run ravine to create a scenic transition and view separation between scenes. The rest is dedicated to rendering as much of Kelker and the Drennan Industrial Park as I can fit without it looking at all crowded. That’s important, because this is the very south edge of Colorado Springs city limits and it is wide open space, or at least it was before it was fully developed as an extractive and industrial area. Basically it sits on a large deposit of exposed alluvial sand and gravel that has been washed down out of the mountains to the west over eons, and it is now filled with sand and aggregate yards, concrete batch plants, hot asphalt mixing plants, precast concrete plants, scrap yards, and the like.

 

USGS (modified)

(click on image to enlarge)

 
As you can see, Kelker and Drennan are actually two different places, not quite a mile apart, separated by aptly named Sand Creek. But being on opposite sides of the main they physically and operationally compliment each other quite nicely, so I’ve slid Drennan north to occupy the area on the east side of the mainline at the rear, since Kelker occupies only the west or front side.

 

Since 1974 Kelker is were the single-track portion of the Joint Line vacates Rio Grande rails and starts running on Santa Fe high-iron, so the milepost numbers jump from D&RGW 79 (from Denver Union Depot) to AT&SF 660 (from Atchison, KS). It’s also the site of not one, but two yards supporting interchange with the US Army’s Fort Carson railroad. One yard belonged to the Rio Grande, the other to the Santa Fe, ten tracks in all. Obviously that will have to be severely scaled back to fit. I’ve combined and reduced it to five much shorter tracks. This will be an active live interchange, as the Fort Carson switch job will come out of staging, cross the swing gate, then split off onto its own right of way to cross Las Vegas Street and enter the interchange yard at its south end.

 

D&RGW GP9 5942 heading into the north end of the interchange yard

Larry Green, 1978
 

USAX GP7L 1823 switching the south end of the interchange yard

 

Fort Carson is home station of the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and it received a variety of inbound carloads of supplies, munitions and new equipment in boxcars, new vehicles and armor on flat cars, and tank car loads of gasoline, diesel, and JP5 jet fuel for its compliment of vehicles and helicopters. I’ve even read that some of the World War II era wood-framed barracks were still in use into the mid ‘70s and still heated with coal stoves, so theoretically even loose car loads of coal were interchanged here. On top of that were battalion and brigade size equipment rail movements to different deployment stations and field exercises and return. Its a golden opportunity to combine my interests in modeling both railroad and military equipment that I just could not pass up.

 

USAX H12-44 1860 at Ft Carson switching the caboose for a rail movement of armor.

Acquiring a fleet of Rapido DODX flats is going to be a necessary stretch.

Robert Harmen, 1977

 

In my late 1970s era there was no rail-served industry at Kelker, just the interchange yard, but later a rail-to-truck transfer facility with two large storage bins was established beside one of the AT&SF yard tracks. It handled lime for use in remediating acid leaching from the old gold mines, mills and tailing piles in the Cripple Creek mining district up in the mountains to the west. I’m going to backdate and downsize that operation, using one of the yard tracks as a team track for transloading lime from covered hoppers directly into pneumatic bulk semi-trailers using portable conveyors, as was done for a time on the team track in the downtown Santa Fe yard, so it’s not too big a stretch. Hot asphalt could also be transloaded here from heated and insulated tank cars into tanker trailers for delivery to the mixing plants, which were not directly served by rail.

Another customer I will add is a spur to the city’s waste water treatment facility, which is located at MP 77, three miles to the north and on the west side of Las Vegas Street. It doesn’t have rail service, but it is large enough to justify it, and at one time a spur did cut off the Rio Grande at the spot, known then as Leander, to drop down and cross Las Vegas to serve a small meat packing plant. I’ll serve this hypothetical traffic with a spur off the north end of the yard to spot tank cars of chlorine, acid and chemicals for unloading. Another example of an industry that does exist in the Springs, and so is a plausible what-if rail customer on the layout.

 

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Drennan Industrial Park

 

Across the main to the east (against the wall) is the relocated Drennan Industrial Park. It’s served by a long double-ended lead with two opposing switches at its midpoint. Those two leads into the industrial park really do cross each other on a diamond before branching and curving east to serve several customers. In my era the park was in its early stages of development and only the two front most industries existed, but I don’t have room to extend the tracks further back anyway.

 

Kelker-Drennan from the north end on the layout

 

Colorado Silica plant from west of the mainline

 

To the north of the diamond is Colorado Silica, a large sand extraction, washing, drying and grading facility specializing in filtration sand for municipal water plants and such. It was an active volume shipper loading both railroad and private-marked 2000-4000 cuft covered hoppers. The plant was wedged in between the main line and its loading spur, but I needed to mirror the complex array of conveyors, dryers, screen towers, storage bins and loaders to the east side of the spur for better appearance and more practical track access when operating on the layout.

 

Colorado Silica as it was, and as mirrored

 

Colorado Silica on the layout, with the chem spur in the foreground

 

To the south of the diamond is the large fenced yard and loading track of Western Scrap Metal Processing, which had relocated from its cramped yard in downtown Colorado Springs reached by C&S trackage. It is now a much larger operation capable of loading sorted, cut and graded scrap steel into 2-4 gondolas at a time for shipment to steel mills, including the Colorado Fuel and Iron mill down in Minnequa, outside Pueblo, Colorado. The yard is equipped with a metal shear/baler/logger, multiple scrap handling cranes, and piles of shredded steel poking up above the gondolas.

 

Western Scrap Metal Processing

At center right of the yard is the shear/logger/baler

with a pivoting conveyor

 

Western Scrap Metal on the layout, with Kelker yard in the foreground.

The covered hoppers and tank cars at right are spotted on the transloading track,

with Springs Gas in the far corner

 

The last customer at the south end will be Springs Gas, an LPG dealer that was actually located five miles further south on the Santa Fe at Crews (MP 654 in Security-Widefield), where the Joint Line resumes its two-main-track character for the run to Pueblo. It’s yet another within-reach stretch of reality to relocate an actual active customer onto the layout.

 

 LPG tank cars at Springs Gas, 1978

 

Kelker-Drennan from the south end on the layout

After exiting south from Kelker-Drennan the main line will be screened by scenery as it does a 180 to head across the swing gate and then enter the Pueblo South Staging yard.

 

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After laying out the track and industries in Kelker-Drennan the result is a spread-out switching district jointly served by the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande, sometimes at the same time, which will require planning, cooperation, and flexibility on the part of crews—and the dispatcher when use of the main line is required to run between Kelker yard and the switching leads. I think I have achieved my goals of balancing trackage, traffic sources, operations, and a sense of wide open space here, so I’m pretty satisfied.

I’m now ready to start building again, but I need to finish some non-railroad projects first, so I probably won’t be making any new blog posts until Fall. 

 

See you next time.

 

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