When the MP-UP merger took effect in 1982, Rio Grande discontinued interchanging traffic at Pueblo with Santa Fe and switched to the Mopac which gave Rio Grande rights over Mopac from Pueblo-Kansas City. Within a few yrs all this through traffic was hauled in DRGW trains. Even though these now were Rio Grande trains, were the jobs worked by MP crews or DRGW crews? Were these guys on a MP or DRGW roster? I’m guessing if it were the orange & black then simply they hired away from the Moppy and joined the Rio Grande. This segment of railroading during the 1980’s across Kansas was quite interesting and now is a distant memory as most trackage is long gone with the Kansas & Oklahoma running some of what is left in western KS.
Several threads related to D&RGW RR have been comment on here in the Forum:
Here’s a link to one such thread: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/33965/433917.aspx#433917
Another link: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/144090/1604122.aspx#1604122
also link to KP RR in Ks.: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/121243/1381199.aspx#1381199
D&RGW never ceased interchanging traffic with Santa Fe at Pueblo. BNSF (Santa Fe successor) and UP (D&RGW successor) continue to this day to interchange traffic at Pueblo. I believe what you are thinking is that the D&RGW-MP interchange ended. But that did not happen either – D&RGW and UP (the MP’s successor) continued to interchange traffic at Pueblo post-UP-MP-WP merger. It’s just that there wasn’t very much D&RGW-MP interchange post-merger. As an ICC-required condition for the merger, UP agreed to grant trackage rights to D&RGW from Pueblo to Kansas City via the MoPac, which D&RGW exercised. Thus, prior to the merger, traffic solicited by D&RGW for a MoPac routing was interlined to MoPac at Pueblo, and subsequent to the merger, traffic solicited by D&RGW for Kansas City was hauled all the way to interchange at Kansas City as D&RGW traffic. MoPac prior to the merger solicited interline traffic to D&RGW, but after the merger, it rarely did so, thus any westward traffic was either interline from a Kansas City connection such as Soo Line, or solicited by D&RGW.
Actually it was hauled in D&RGW trains beginning day 1. But D&RGW never operated the trains using its own crews; instead, it contracted with UP to have the trains hauled by UP crews. I think that’s what confuses people.
The
Rickety? Looking up from the south, I thought Anschutz was creating a permanent retirement home for the mudmonster under that 119#CWR. An awful lot of those miles, like around the sag & curves at Sand Creek/Chivington were 1000-1200 ties per mile candidates. 500 ties/mile would not even keep things at status quo, derailments and all. A lot of it now is two rust streaks in the weeds used as car storage (VSR).
There was nothing so fascinating as watching a 120-car Eugene lumber train wallowing across that track at 10 mph, hour after hour, the boxcars swaying so far you could swear you could look down the middle between two of them and see a third.
RWM
I scooted along the MoPac line in 1964 on the Colorado Eagle to Pueblo on family vacation. Quite a trip. I recall waking up (WB) at Hoisington and seeing two clocks on the depot wall facing the tracks. The clocks read an hour different. I told my father then next morning and he told me it must have been a dream…not so said the trainman…it was CST and MST dividing point.
The return trip later confirmed the two clocks.
Ed
The Pueblo gateway played a part of SF history traffic patterns as I can recall 25 years back watching Denver-Chicago 194 and California-Kansas City 473 pass through Newton. The old SF guys said these were basically DRGW haulage trains and beacuse of traffic drops, were abolished by the end of 1985 when that traffic shifted to the north. 473 was a WP-DRGW-SF run through and in June, 1985 changed to 423 and I don’t know if then it just became a solo SF train Colorado-Kan City. I recall Frailey article from yrs back which may have covered some of this and I may have to dig in the back issues to find out more.
Often got dragged north on the back of 594/564 and dragged east on the back of 883 more often than not.