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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