Hey everyone. This is my first post in this forum, and I’ve done some digging and haven’t been able to find the info that i’m looking for so I figured I’ll ask around here.
Basically, what I want to do is free-lance Western mountain railroading with Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Denver and Rio Grande Western engines. I know Santa Fe had lines to Denver, but thats about it; is there any specific location I can check out where all 3 were found?
And now part 2. I want to do all diesel operations. I’m not that good with correct eras though. Would it be prototypically feasable to have a layout that runs the following: GP7, GP9, RS-1, SD35, SD45, GP35, and SD9 engines? What i want to do is have a sort of first-gen/2nd-gen transitional era going on.
Santa Fe and D&RGW had common points at Trinidad, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Denver, Colorado, and paralleled each other between Pueblo and Denver. SP and D&RGW had their only common point at Ogden, Utah. There was no common point between SP, Santa Fe, and D&RGW. During the 1986-1995 time period – between the SP-D&RGW merger and the Santa Fe-BN merger – you would see SP locomotives at Pueblo and Denver (and to a very limited extent at Trinidad) as SP locomotives began being pooled onto D&RGW trains. I think you would find Pueblo an interesting place to model, it had four railroads, very heavy industrial traffic thanks to the CF&I steel mill, and an unusually tangled-up track arrangement with all of the main lines looping through the city center due to the topography.
Santa Fe and D&RGW had one run-through coal train with pooled D&RGW and Santa Fe power, which ran from Arco, Colorado (West Elk Mine) to Celanese Corp. at Kingsmill, Texas. Normally Santa Fe would provide SD40-2s but sometimes SD45s, SD45-2s, and once even a GP60. That train ran once weekly.
Part 2 – it IS possible to put all of those on a railroad at once but the RS1 is the clinker on a western railroad as they were not common. Neither were SD35s in the west, only UP had them as I recall (and not many). D&RGW happily ran GP7, GP9, SD45, GP35 and SD9 from 1966 through to 1983 or so.
Thats EXACTLY the kind of response I was looking for, thanks. I’m going to look more into those locations; I really appreciate it.
As for the engines, I recently bought Santa Fe and Southern Pacific SD35’s, and the RS-1’s are Santa Fe also. I have 2 zebra stripe ones, but I’ve been jonesing hardcore for an original-run Kato powered Santa Fe Atlas RS-1 in the blue paint scheme.
All had terminals in the East Bay (Oakland/Richmond, CA). Also, the SP had direct rail service to San Francisco which the WP and ATSF had to access via railroad ferry. They had roughly parallel routes, often many miles apart: WP-SP from Oakland to Ogden (central route) via Altamont Pass (between Livermore and Tracy, CA); ATSF-SP from Oakland to New Mexico(?) (southern route) via Martinez, CA. The SP and ATSF also served Los Angeles and San Diego. The WP and SP shared trackage in Nevada. The ATSF and SP shared trackage over Tehachapi Pass (which was located south of Bakersfield and north of Mojave, CA.) SP considered the WP and ATSF to be direct competitors, but did cooperate rarely as evidenced by the shared trackage.
In the “neighborhood” of 1970, the SP operated all those locomotives concurrently except for the RS-1 (never had any), and it had only one GP-7 but that was for SP’s Cotton Belt.
I don’t know much other than about the SP and Califo
I agree with Railwayman. Pueblo, CO. would be your best bet. D&RGW shared a yard with MoPac and was a big interchange parther. There was some limited interchange with ATSF and BN/C&S there, too. It’s a stretch (but you did say freelanced), but you could use the ATSF RS-1 as a lost holdout, they were gone by then, IIRC. You could also have an occasional SP unit show up as a stray, though it wouldn’t be to likely in the late 60’s-early 70’s, but there you go. Rio Grandes SD45’s were quite the regulars in Pueblo, too, running hotshots to Odgen.
The only way to connect all three without smudging a bit would update to the mid-80’s to early-90’s, but then the SD35 and RS-1 would real hard to explain.
You could probably model the Colton, CA and West Colton, CA area in the early to mid 1990s. SP used SD35s as West Colton switchers, and perhaps haulers. Since Rio Grande Industries had bought SP, there were significant quantities of DRGW locomotives out here. Also, ATSF’s mainline to the LA and San Diego areas crosses the SP main line at Colton.
SP also used SD35s at its Englewood Yard in, or by, Houston, TX. It seems like ATSF went to Houston.
As mentioned earlier Ogden was the only place the SP and D&RGW met so for Colorado it would have to be D&RGW ATSF and either UP or CB&Q/BN.
The Espee kept their GP and SD9’s longer than most other roads. Both models were rebuilt in the early to mid 1970’s and remained on the roster until the Yello Peril took over. SP had SD35’s and for the most part they were used as helper power over Tehachapi along with GE U30C units. There were some run through coal trains from the BN into Texas that had SP and BN pool power. BN required big units so SP sent EMD SD40, 45 and GE U33C units.
Oregon became home for a lot of the SP SD9’s for most of their service lives. Sets of six or more were common on the Tillamook and Siskiyou lines.
I wanted to post this reply to your question about 1st generation motive power. The SF was the only railroad of the three lines listed that actually ran RS-1’s.
SP/D&RGW ran all the types listed except the GP7 and the RS-1, the SP subsidiary Cotton Belt actually ran with RS-3’s, while the SP/T&NO ran RSD-5’s.
The only power that all three railroads shared in common was the F series, and the Alco PA’s.
For D&RGW & Santa Fe. For SP & Santa Fe look to Arizona and California.
And don’t forget the CF&I (Steel Mill which had their own railroad).
Just curious how did you end up with those three railroads? Wouldn’t it have been better to choose three that were closer together? SF, D&RGW, and CB&Q are naturals for southern Colorado.
I would have to agree with the majority of the others. Colorado is your best bet for the railroads that you’re considering…possibly Arizona, depending on if you’d be willing to model a more recent timeframe, because you’d be hard-pressed to find ANYTHING from the DRGW that far south until I believe 1995.( does that sound about right to all the sticklers? ). However, if you stick with Colorado, I don’t think you’d have a hard time running whatever you’d want … except the RS. SP had their SD-35s and Geeps, DRGW had their SD-9s, GP-35s, and SD-45s, and possibly a few older Geeps would be floating around. However, the majority of those Geeps would be on locals or yard duty.
All this is prototypical…you want freelanced. In my opinion, I’d lean toward the entire DENVER/PUEBLO Joint Line. All those railroads would have run on those tracks at some point, and you get the advantage of putting rocks, hills, grass, mountain backdrops, etc. wherever your heart desires.
hey thanks again everybody. I recently bought an old back issue of Trains that had a feature on D&RGW’s coal trains in Colorado, so thats pretty much what I’ll be doing I think. I love the look of that area with the mountains, rock outcroppings, and evergreen/conifers.
What I’ve been thinking of doing is modeling a small branchline off of the RG/SP mainline that serves a couple of mines. The mines would be served/switched by my fleet of RS-1’s, with the locals being run out to the main by my SF SD35 and SD9’s. The premise being that the mines are owned by the same person, and required enough motive power that when the BNSF merger occurred, the SF sold off its older stuff, being snatched up by the mine’s upper brass at a bargain bulk price, or something to that effect.
Basically, what started all this was my love for the original Atlas/Kato pinstripe Santa Fe RS-1’s. I was originally going to model the SF, but once I found out that they really didn’t do much rocky mountain running, i decided on the Rio Grande and SP because they do a lot of the mountain coal hauling, and they’re all western roads primarily.
i do have another question: Coal hoppers. Since I’ll be running GP7’s, 9’s, 35’s, and 40’s along with SD9’s, 35’s, and 45’s, would 2 and 3-bay hoppers still be prototypical to run?
That sounds very much like the D&RGW Monarch Branch. The branch ran from Salida CO, to just past Monarch. It served the town of Maysville but more importantly a limestone (dolomite actually) mine owned by the Coloardo Fuel & Iron Company. The load was heavy enough for one “mine” train a day that ran from Pueblo to the mine & back. The line was in operation until the steel mill closed down in 1982. Track was ripped out in 1984. There is a great book “Trails Among the Columbine 1993/1994 D&RGW Monarch Branch”.
If you like Zebra painted Alcos in the Colorado mountains look to Trinidad CO and the Raton Pass. Santa Fe used Alcos for helper service. Trinidad also hosted the C&S (CB&Q), D&RGW, and Genisee & Wyoming (the “branch” for accessing the coal mines to the west of town). For some a few clips of great video of this area see “Santa Fe Odysse Volume 1”.
SP units were never really “welcome” here in Colorado.
You’d be fine with running 3 bay hoppers, even 100 ton 3 bays, depending on the era you think you might be shooting for. You could get away with 2 bay hoppers, especially if you’d consider them privately owned, and mainly ran to a shorter distance, final destination. Again, that all depends on what era you’re thinking about. I do like the idea of having some older power working privately on industries.
do you know where I can go to get some overhead pictures of the trackage layout?
what I was thinking of doing was having 2 separate mine trains, one of 3/4 bay hoppers and one of 2-bay’s. They would both come down the branchline from the mine and connect with the mainline, but thats where the 2-bay’s would end their trip, being used at a power plant.
Anything and everything is legal on a model railroad.
If you’re looking for prototype that would have D&RGW, mine runs, and Alcos, then perhaps the place to look would be Helper, Utah, where in 1960 the D&RGW and the all-Alco Utah Railway had an overlapping network of steeply graded branch lines reaching into steepwalled canyons to serve a collection of coal mines.
Two-door hoppers were pretty scarce in the West. In fact, until the 1960s, hoppers of any type were unusual in the West, as western roads preferred to use the drop-bottom gon because coal was highly seasonal, most of the traffic moving between September and March, and the rest of the year the drop-bottom gon could be used to haul sugar beets, ore, concentrates, sand and gravel, ballast, pipe, ties, lumber, logs, and poles. D&RGW began purchasing 70-ton three-door hoppers in the late 1950s, and both UP and D&RGW built huge fleets of 100-ton stee
I’ve found a nice medium-sized freight depot that I like, but its a wood structure (or made to look like wood). Would this be out of place in this engine era?
No. D&RGW used the wood freight depot at Leadville and wood combination depots at many other locations until the early 1980s such as Delta, Richfield, and Thompson, when it closed most of the open agencies.
i think i asked this earlier, but i can’t find it in the text: are there any specific road names that would be definitely out of place in the Rockies? ie: B&O, C&O, PRR, CNJ, WM, N&W, etc