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 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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Laying out the yards: Santa Fe

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 6:  Laying out the Colorado Springs yards: the Santa Fe

Now for the just over 8 feet that will represent the remnant of the Santa Fe yard and it’s customers so the Santa Fe crew will have some work to do and a place of their own to tie up. But first we need to wrap up the last few Rio Grande downtown customers. (Map here.)

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Moving south out of the Rio Grande yard Cimarron Street crosses above the tracks just below the east and west yard throats. Right after the bridge a lead switches west off the main to cross Conejos Street and enter the grounds of the Colorado Springs Department of Public Utilities Martin Drake power plant.

The massive plant building itself, with it’s smoke stacks, cooling batteries, scrubbers, coal piles and conveyors will conveniently be relegated to the aisle and your imagination, but off the front of edge of the layout above I do have room to fit two plant tracks on which to spot cuts of empty hoppers to be picked up by the Grande switch job and place loads on for the plant switcher to shuttle to the unloading pit. It won't match the prototype track arrangement, but it will allow functional interchange of cars.

Over the years three different small GE units were employed to switch the plant, and one of them can be parked out front on a pocket track. In my 1978-79 era the plant received coal in classic Rio Grande Bethlehem Steel quad hoppers (thank you ExactRail!), but later it came in black Ortner rapid discharge hoppers emblazoned with billboard yellow CSDPU initials. These cars were bought in 1979 to supply the new Ray Nixon plant built a few miles south in Fountain, CO and the trainset stayed in that service at first. Besides coal, the plant got the occasional empty covered hopper for loading recovered fly ash. It was shipped to Colorado Portland Cement in, where else, Portland, Colorado on the Royal Gorge route. 

To the east of the main the Lower East yard lead extends into a respectable drill track beside the passing siding and south CTC crossover. A switching lead splits off here to reach a storage track and then a trailing spur in along the back lot of Denver Equipment’s pattern shop and into the storage yard and enclosed craneway of Supperstein Steel.

C&S track served DE’s main plant a block to the east along Monero Avenue (switched by Santa Fe), but the pattern shop abutted the Rio Grande spur directly. I don’t know if DE actually had rail service here, but I figure finished mining equipment could have been loaded here as the assembly shop was just across Sierra Madre Street (above), and perhaps bagged bentonite foundry clay could have been delivered here. Steel, pig iron, coal, coke and foundry sand would have been delivered directly to the main plant foundry and material storage area. (I’m always thinking about freight cars that I can—and can’t—operate on the layout.) 

Southbound Santa Fe train 413 led by U23B 6342 is about to cross over from the passing siding to the main after finishing its set out and pick up work in Lower East yard (1976).

 

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Now we can turn to the Santa Fe yard. With a quick slight-of-hand, beyond the Supperstein switch the east side switching lead magically turns into the joint connecting track linking the Rio Grande and Santa Fe yards. The connection actually splits off the main a few blocks further south and east and curves back to the north, but by unfolding the Santa Fe yard it will fit quite nicely here on the layout.

USGS 1975 (modified)

So let's assume that Rio Grande track ownership ends at the switch into Supperstein and Santa Fe iron begins. The first AT&SF switch begins the ladder of their compact three-track yard. The second turnout, a trailing switch, leads to the newsprint warehouse of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph newspaper.

This was the north leg of the Santa Fe wye and the connection to the C&S street trackage that ran down Monero to the main Denver Equipment plant, but the track quickly runs into my basement wall, making it impossible to deliver that traffic. Newsprint cars were actually spotted right here on the wye leg for unloading, sometimes causing CN paper cars to be shoved way over into Sahwatch Street when the C&S trackage was being worked. The warehouse is actually a bit further west just across Wahsatch Street (above), so I had to change the skew of the building quite a bit to make it fit the shallower curve. Those small concrete block buildings really do create a tight alley here, though, and conveniently help hide the end of track at the wall.

After the Santa Fe yard tracks cross over the sunken Costilla Street subway on a broad, low-clearance steel viaduct (think Micro Engineering components) the next switch leads to four stub tracks that fan out along the back and into the corner to serve City Waste Paper, a wine and liquor distributor, the four-story concrete and brick Nicoll Storage warehouse, the team track & TOFC ramp (which still grounded the occasional trailer in 1979!), and the dilapidated old Santa Fe-C&S freight house.

It hadn’t been used by the railroad for quite a while, but a roofing contractor was leasing it to store asphalt singles, roll roofing, tar and other supplies, making it still an occasional switch spot. As with the customers along the Rio Grande yard, a few buildings have been eliminated here to space things out so that they don’t look over crowded, Sutherland Lumber being one, as it was a pretty small yard that could barely fit two cars on its short spur.

Here is what the Santa Fe yard looked like in 1973, after passenger service had ended but just before the main was puled up to the north and the yard was radically downsized. The first view looks south. In the left distance is a grain elevator located inside the wye, with Southerland Lumber to its right above the track scale. The sheet metal building to the right of the scale house is City Waste Paper. Looking north the old freight house is behind the scale house, and to its right is the new freight house and passenger depot. 

Larry Green, 1973

Along the front of the yard is the lead into the big Transit Mix Concrete batch plant, which splits into one track for unloading covered hoppers of cement, and another for unloading open hoppers of crushed stone into between-the-rails pits. I’m toying with adding a through shed to protect the cement unloading pit from the elements, but the stone pit is unprotected and way in the back where it can’t really be seen. The plant was actually switched from the opposite direction, but that won't work in my space so the lead has been reversed.

   Myron Wood, Pikes Peak Library, 1981

This is a sprawling operation that looks like it really justifies rail service. Built on several levels on a slope, it includes multiple sand and aggregate piles, two steel cement silos, one of which can transload into pneumatic dry bulk trailers for delivery to Transit Mix’s outlying smaller batch plants, a large rock bunker (the blue foam block), and not one but two mixing towers and loaders, the original one-spot, and a newer, larger two-spot loader, all fed by an array of long, inclined conveyors and elevators. There were also multiple out buildings housing offices, a mixer truck repair shop, and such that won’t be modeled. 

Fitting in all those structures to scale, especially the conveyors, would push the concrete mixing towers & loaders well out into the aisle, so some serious compression is called for. Since the conveyors will be mostly hidden behind the rock bunker and towers anyway I figure I can foreshorten the scene and simply forego some of them, at most including one at a much compressed and steeper incline, plus the conveyor heads where they dump into the hoppers at the top of the bunker and mixing towers. I’m still tinkering with how best to suggest all this. The Walthers Blue Star batch plant can be adapted to resemble the older one-spot mixing tower & loader, while the larger two-spot tower is made of tall cast concrete fin wall sections, which I will have to scratch build.

Meanwhile, in front of the Santa Fe yard and Transit Mix the descending Rio Grande main line will cross the double-duty sunken street on the handsome Nevada Avenue Art Deco cast concrete bridge and then curve past Transit Mix and cross Shook’s Run onto the adjacent wall into Kelker and then on to points south across the swing gate, but that’s the subject of future posts. 

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Laying out the yards: Rio Grande

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 5: Laying out the Colorado Springs yards: the D&RGW

 

(click images to enlarge)

BN caboose 10518 splits the signals of the north Colorado Springs crossover as it brings up the rear of a UFIX loads bound for Smithers Lake, TX. The head of the train has already passed over Monument Creek, ducked under Bijou Street, and is running down the main alongside the Rio Grande's Springs yard. The signals, crossover and bridge will be on a lift-out.

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Moving right along with the full-size planning process, I’ve skipped ahead to tackle the Colorado Springs yards that will run along the long wall of the layout space—the very heart of the layout, out of which the three local jobs will work, one each Rio Grande, Santa Fe and Rock Island. 

This wasn’t just impatience on my part, as the run from the Rock Island wye at Roswell to the Springs yard throat includes the north crossover of the Colorado Springs CTC siding and a skewed two-track deck girder bridge over Monument Creek that have to be built on a removable section to allow access to my water service and electrical panel. It can’t even be properly laid out much less fabricated until the permanent benchwork that it will tie into is constructed on either side of the gap, and that means the yards need to be laid out and built first.

(OK, I won’t deny that it was fun to continue working in 3D planning mode, pulling out some cars and engines to mock things up and check siding lengths, clearances, and the like, but don’t tell anyone.)

The long wall of the layout room is 36 and half feet long. The left 8 feet of that is reserved for that lift-out section and the curve onto the adjacent short wall, and I will use 2o feet for the Rio Grande yard, allocating the remaining eight feet and change to the Santa Fe yard. 

Below is the map of the Rio Grande yard from the north CTC crossover to the connecting track to the Santa Fe at bottom right. The layout plan is here.

USGS 1975 (modified)

A view north off the Bijou Street overpass capturing a meet between a southbound D&RGW train running down the main past the signals and across the Monument Creek bridge and a Santa Fe train in the passing siding. Note the C&S SD9 behind the ATSF power. This suggests that this is Santa Fe train 314 combined with C&S train 151, which was common practice when neither road had sufficient tonnage to run a separate train.

The Upper Yard tracks diverge off both sides immediately off the bridge. At left Interstate 25 runs beside the tracks, while the tall cottonwoods border Monument Valley Park at right.

Robert Harmen, 1976

A similar view simulated on the layout, albeit the scene will be been greatly compressed linearly. The flat roof building at right is the joint D&RGW-RI Freight Agency.

 Here is the scene near ground level as viewed from I-25.

The railroad crosses over Monument Creek on this skewed 4-span ballasted deck girder bridge. It will be reduced to 3 spans on the layout.

And here's the view from the bridge at track level, with the Bijou Street overpass beyond.

B&W photos Jim Eager, 1985

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 As we saw in the last post, before 1974 the Rio Grande’s Colorado Springs yard was a spread out affair with relatively few tracks and only a hand full adjacent customers, plus a large freight house with two-story office section at the north end smack in the middle. Santa Fe’s yard wasn’t big either, and both roads had extensive trackage at the north end purely to support passenger operations.

When the Santa Fe abandoned their main line in 1974 they vacated their depot and scaled down their freight yard to the bare minimum, while the Grande’s yard was rebuilt and enlarged to accommodate both roads, plus the Rock Island, don’t forget. The Grande’s disused freight house was demolished to make room for more yard tracks, creating a tightly hemmed in compact 9-track yard on the east side of the main and siding, with all tracks double-ended. This is known as the Lower East yard. Across from the Lower East Yard was the wye and four-track Lower West yard, with both through and stub tracks, including a bare bones RIP track and locomotive servicing facilities. The Upper Yard served the old passenger facilities, while to the west across from the depot were three Rock Island yard tracks and a couple customer spurs.

The rebuilt Lower East yard alone would be pretty large to fit on a home layout, especially considering this is not a terminal classification yard, but rather a local switching and interchange yard. No mainline trains originate or terminate here, just the local switch jobs and the Rock Island local turn. The model yard only has to be big enough to handle their work, and the set out and pick up blocks of the respective mainline trains that feed local operations. Time to exercise some careful selective compression. 

First, the Springs yard was severely reduced in over all length by half. That sounds radical, but I simply won’t be needing the Upper Yard at all as the Rio Grande depot closed in 1971 with the creation of Amtrak and the discontinuance of the last remaining pair of Santa Fe passenger runs between Denver and La Junta to connect with The Chief. The depot was sold and converted to the Italian restaurant Giuseppe’s, a long time Springs eatery and landmark. I need a working freight yard, not a restaurant, no matter how historic and picturesque, so I simply surgically removed the entire area between the Bijou St. and Colorado Ave. overpasses, with the two bridges at each end compressed into one structure. The only thing relocated from this section onto the modeled layout will be the joint D&RGW-RI Agency building.

The Upper Yard looking north from Colorado Avenue, with the old D&RGW depot, now Giuseppe’s Restaurant, in the right distance, and the Bijou Street overpass in the center distance. This entire area will be omitted from the layout to allow the freight yard to be larger.

This means I lose the freight customers and spots to the left, including the old Robinson Grain buildings, which had been taken over by Simpson by my era and were thus basically redundant anyway. A small beer distributor also goes, but there will be two other larger ones elsewhere on the layout, and also the dilapidated team dock and TOFC ramp, which were barely used by 1979. I can live with that as it allows me to make the freight yard large enough to actually be useful.

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The Colorado Avenue overpass with the Rio Grande's freight house, last used by the railroad's trucking subsidiary Rio Grande Motorway, being torn down in 1973 to make way for rebuilding the yard.

Larry Green, 1973

Next, I set about tackling the freight yard itself. Overall length was again reduced as our model trains are just not as long as real trains are, same for the set-out and pick-up blocks that the yard will need to handle. This required that a few of the smaller buildings along the east side of the yard be eliminated and others compressed a bit, but no customers were lost. Simpson Feed, Crissey-Fowler Lumber, and the Louden Furniture warehouse are still large enough to be plausibly rail served, although I did have to move the latter’s spur to the yard side of the building from the alley behind it. The three were spread out to give them room to breath and avoid overcrowding until they looked “right” to me. Crissey-Fowler was larger and more active than the building implies, and it will be supplemented with stacked lumber at both ends between buildings. The tracks here were at a slight diagonal to the street grid, so almost all of the buildings are angled to the wall, which I think creates an interesting dynamic and unifying effect. I was careful to make sure that no roof peaks were cut by the angle as that would impinge on the effect. 

The Lower East yard was also reduced from nine down to six through tracks, which really helped reduce layout depth and preserve yard track length, very important for operation and ergonomics. After doing some simulations I determined that six tracks would suffice if I kept their use flexible instead of assigning tracks to each of the three roads that used them as the prototype did. Plus, the Rio Grande also has the Lower West yard to work with. 

Here is the view south down the Lower East yard from the Colorado Avenue overpass, prototype and model.

 At left is the Simpson Feed complex, accessed by a switchback off the lead into Crissey-Fowler, with Louden's warehouse in the far distance. At right are the old Marr Wholesale Grocery warehouse and city gas compressor house, with the RIP track and company service area inside the wye, and Abrahamson's lumber shed beyond. The far overpass is Cimarron Street.

The photo was populated with locomotives of the four railroads that operate in or through the yard: Rio Grande, Rock Island, Santa Fe, and Burlington Northern.

Can anyone spot the serious rules violation?

Simpson Feed's sprawling complex of old and new structures. The array of corrugated Chief bins at right replaced the old elevator that succumbed to fire in 1971.

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Lower West yard was reduced to two through tracks, which will be required to switch the municipal power plant, plus the RIP track, engine service and tie-up track, a spur for company materials cars, and the south leg of the wye. The north wye leg was removed during the yard rebuild, but the railroad discovered that it really was needed so it was put back in sometime between 1980 and 1985. I was very glad I was able to include most of the clutter of small, older car repair and section buildings inside the wye using a shallow bump-out, including the wheel crane, diesel tank and fuelling station, and locomotive sand hopper spot.

 

Unfortunately, I just could not fit the spur into Abrahamson Lumber, which sat tight against the Lower West south of the wye. There simply wasn’t room in the West ladder to fit the turnout for the spur, plus it would have increased the depth of the benchwork, making the reach to the Lower East yard ladder unacceptable. Such is life; cars for Abrahamson will instead be spotted on the south Wye track for unloading. 

 

1975, from an Al Chione set

 

 

Cimarron Street crosses over the south yard throats and Conejos Street. At the time of this photo the Lower West yard ladder no longer tied into the main as it did previously.

 

Next post we’ll look at how to fit in the Rio Grande customers south of the overpass, along with the remnant Santa Fe yard and customers. 

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