This may be a bit too modern for the era the OP mentioned but Athearn did put out a Coors switcher recently. I picked up one at a local hobby shop just before Christmas.
This is the newer SW1000 that they have on the property now. They had for a number of years at least 3 SW900’s. I believe that one of them is now part of the Colorado Railroad Musuem in Golden.
Also since it was mentioned, I am a member of the HO scale club in the basement of Railroad musuem.
There is so much history there. It is a great place to learn about Railroading and they also have an extensive library. If you need to do research it is a great place to do it.
Motley, I must warn you Coors property is private and so are the road through it; be careful on you photo endeavours. There are many road through the property but be careful not to trespass. They do have signs posted to this affect.
32nd Ave runs along the south side of the plant and 44th ave runs along the north side of the plant. Also along 44th is where the transfer tables are located as well as the interchange yard and the oil distributor. They do quite a bit of switching there (both on the Coors ROW and on the BNSF ROW). It should be a fun photoshoot.
I sure enjoyed the visit at the museum. The layout is a great piece of work by you all. I sure wish I knew about you guys and some of the other model RR activities in the Denver area while I was living there. My model railroading activity was very limited during the 7 years I lived there and in Ft. Collins.
Motley, I’m looking forward to your photos as well.
I model D&RGW between 1965 and 1985 and would love to see photo’s of the Coors Brewery with rail cars during that time period. I imaging more recent photo’s would be easier to find, but pre-mid 1980’s - that always seems to be difficult. I hope someone can scare some up!
Ok I went to visit Coors today. I went during my lunchbreak, so I didn’t have a lot of time to spend down there. So I found a couple of places, concentrating more on photos for the panoramic view that I can use for a photo backdrop.
I actually didn’t even try to drive on their property, but found some places higher above.
These are from the south side of the facitly, you can see the truck loading area.
And the north side of the facilty, I actually found a residentual area overlooking Coors up on a hill with a nice view.
It sure was a beautiful day! We finally climed out of the teens, it was 48 degrees.
Anyways, I’ll go visit again and spend more time and see if I can watch the Rail Ops. But at least I have some photos to create the backdrop now.
