I was wonderin if anybody had pics of the mopac line that went through Council Grove Kansas, i think it was the line that went clear to pueblo colorado.
no, but I rode the Colorado Eagle as a 9 year old from St. Louis to Pueblo.
Got a couple of memories, but sadly, no photos.
ed
I have no idea about that line, but I know about a mopac line between Chicago and St. Louis. Sorry
Its the old Hoisington line. If you pick up a pre-UP merger MoPac timetable on Ebay it will have all the sidings, stations and speeds for the line.
It was sold to the SP after the UP merger and then sold to a shortline after the SP merger.
Dave H.
To the best of my knowledge, UP stopped using, or drastically reduced traffic, on that line shortly after the flood of 1993. I have pictures of UP coal traffic rerouted through Osage City on that line due to the Marysville Sub being washed out in a few places then. I think the tracks were taken up in Osage City.
Take care,
Russell
If you find anyone that has any, let me know as I would like to see some myself being brought up in the area, I can remember the MoPac’s Colorado Line very well, What a shame that quite a bit is torn up.
After the UP take over, the East end from Herington to Osawatomie was run by the D&RGW via trackage rights from Pueblo to Kansas City, and they used a part of KCS’s Knoche Yard for layovers and interchanges. They used old Conrail GP40s in patchwork as They seemed to be granted access to Kansas City literaly overnight and D&RGW hurried up and leased these.
After they took over SP, they used the interchange at Herington to access the Golden State via Topeka to Kansas City and used SP’s Armourdale Yard. The East end then sat with an occasional run by a UP Local, usually a UP GP38 and B30-7 and old Mopac Road Transfer Caboose, that would do the work along the entire line.
The line pretty much sat until 1993, when it was virtually reborn with flood reroutes. The current traffic patterns at the time had everything from the west to Kansas City routed through Topkea, problem was they all converged on the swollen Kansas River! The Mopac line was the only one that bypassed this in the state. This brought BN Coal Train reroutes as well as SP trains heading east towards Osawatomie. I would say this lasted a week or so. I got to video tape quite a few trains heading east over the old diamond at Herington out of the yard toward Council Grove, several east of town, a BN Coal train at Wilsey and crew change at Council Grove. I really wish I would have taped more as they tore the line out a year later in 1994 from Herington, to Osawotomie and in Council Grove, VERY LITTLE actually remains of this once well maintained main line.
One really neat thing about this Mopac Main Line was that quite a few of it’s sidings were the original mainline alignments, which caused them to curve and go up “hill and dale”, before returning to the main line at the other end.[:)]
The West end from Lind
Hey i would like to see the pics of the up in osage city, also Rustyrex do you think you could ever make a copy of your tape, i would love to see it.
Thanks
Daniel
Sorry for a delay in response, don’t get a chance to get on the internet everyday.
I will have to dig into some of my old tapes and see exactly what I all have, I know quite a bit from the surrounding areas from 1990-1995. I have most packed away right now from moving. Let me know your email address and I can let you know more.
hey Rustyrex my email is darcher06@yahoo.com, thanks for your help talk to you soon