Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979
Post 4: The Joint Line through Colorado Springs in a nutshell
Oblique aerial of central Colorado Springs
(click on image to enlarge)
It’s 1954 and we’re looking east as we would be from the summit of Pike’s Peak, with the Rocky Mountains at our back and the high plains of Colorado stretching off to the horizon before us.
Entering the frame at bottom left is the D&RGW mainline from Denver (in orange), which hosts all southbound traffic on the Joint Line. It crosses Monument Creek on a double-track deck girder bridge to enter downtown Colorado Springs. After ducking under Bijou Street the joint D&RGW-CRI&P depot pops into view (built circa 1880 and subsequently expanded several times). The imposing Antlers Hotel looms above it across the park to the east. It looks like the Springs section of the Rocky Mountain Rocket has arrived and is parked in front of the depot, the equipment waiting to be turned on the wye for the return trip east later in the day.
Across the track is Robinson Grain, just before the mainline passes beneath the Colorado Avenue viaduct to run past Simpson Grain, Marr Wholesale Groceries, the retired city gas plant, and the large brick D&RGW freight house with a two-story office block at the north end. Opposite it is the wye leading to the Rio Grande’s Manitou Branch, which runs a few miles west into the foothills. In this era there were only a few yard tracks and a hand full of small customer buildings along the east side of the yard, while on the west side was Abrahamson Lumber.
Continuing south the main once passed beneath a low wooden trestle that carried the Colorado Midland and later the Midland Terminal east (blue dashed line in the dark slash) to reach Colorado & Southern track (in green) embedded in Monero Street to continue to the Santa Fe depot eight blocks to the east and five blocks to the north.
The C&S itself turned north here to run as far as Colorado Ave in Sahwatch Street, which was crowded with yard tracks and customer spurs serving the likes of Newton Lumber, Crissey-Fowler Lumber, Supperstein Steel, Western Iron & Metal, Union Ice, and perhaps its largest customer, the Denver Equipment foundry, which manufactured hard rock mining and ore milling and processing machinery until the plant closed in 2007. It occupied an entire city block and later expanded west across Sierra Madre Street after the Midland Terminal was torn up.
Further south the Rio Grande runs past the Colorado Springs municipal power plant, which was built on the site of the yards and shops of the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway (bottom right corner). The Grande’s main then curves east just out of the frame and reenters just before crossing over Nevada Ave, where a connecting track splits off to curve back north to reach the northbound Santa Fe main, yard and depot. All northbound passenger and freight cars had to be transferred via this track to head north on the Santa Fe main, just as all southbound cars did to head south on the Rio Grande.
The D&RGW main then crosses the Shook’s Run gully on a long fill and stone culvert before exiting the frame for good to head south to Pueblo for connections to points south, east and west.
Across the top of the photo is the northbound Santa Fe mainline (in red), entering at top right to run past Summit Brick. It joins with the connecting track at Fountain Boulevard and then proceeds north through the ATSF yard past a wye enclosing a grain elevator. The C&S Springs Branch once crossed the Santa Fe here on a diamond to continue east on a spindly trestle across Shook’s Run to reach it’s own north-south mainline several miles east of Colorado Springs, but in 1900 the C&S abandoned its own sinuous and undulating route in favour of trackage rights on the Santa Fe, and by extension, on the Rio Grande when the Joint Line was created in 1918. Remaining isolated C&S trackage and customers in the Springs is switched for them by the Santa Fe.
The Santa Fe main and yard continues north past Sutherland Lumber, over Costilla Street, past the old joint AT&SF-C&S freight house (built in 1889 and later rebuilt), and then reaches the Santa Fe’s large brick depot, passenger platforms, and new freight house (all built in 1918). Beyond the depot the main track crosses over Pike’s Peak Ave and then runs north through residential neighbourhoods across numerous grade crossings, which would later become a sore point with residents and the city fathers.
Time and change marches on
By my late 1970s era the railroad presence in the Springs shown in the photo had changed considerably. Foremost, that friction between the City and the Santa Fe over trains disrupting traffic and residential peace and quiet finally came to a head, prompting the Santa Fe to vacate its right of way through the Springs in 1974 at the city’s urging, electing to run instead on the D&RGW main through the city, which was converted to a bi-directional CTC-controlled line through town.
The Santa Fe yard was also truncated and downsized, leaving only a few tracks to service existing customers, while the Rio Grande yard was enlarged to handle the local traffic of both railroads, replacing the Grande’s freight house with more yard tracks hemmed in by existing and new buildings along the east side.
In addition, many of the smaller pre-Interstate Highway system industries of the 40-foot boxcar and 32-foot semi-trailer 1954 era once served by the Rio Grande, Santa Fe and Colorado & Southern were no longer large enough to justify rail service or even still in business. These included the railroads’ own freight houses, the smaller warehouses and distributers, small lumber, coal, petroleum, grain and feed dealers and the like. However, a few rail customers were still active and had even grown, while others had relocated to less cramped digs outside of the downtown core. In fact there was actually more local rail traffic in the Springs in the late 1970s than in 1954, and on top of that Colorado Springs was experiencing a population boom supporting multiple lumber yards, building supply dealers, concrete batch plants and such. I’ll describe some these traffic and customer base changes in future posts
Adapting all this to my layout space
So how to fit not only the Rio Grande yard and customers, but also the remnant Santa Fe yard and customers on a layout, seeing as the two were many blocks apart. I think that’s best shown with the following schematic.
Basically, I simply unfolded the truncated Santa Fe yard and connecting track 180 degrees to run beside the D&RGW main to the south of the Rio Grande yard. True, this reverses the compass direction of the Santa Fe yard, but it remains internally consistent. I can live that. Of course it is more involved than that, as we will see in the next few posts showing how I laid out the yards on the layout.
