Santa Fe York Canyon Coal trains

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

I was going through some slides the other day and ran across a view I took of a Santa Fe coal train running west across northern Illinois from February of 1993. It was an empty York Canyon train. I did a bit of research on the move, since I remebered that they began around that time, but seemed to end before they were supposed to.

As background, these trains came out of the York Canyon coal mine on the Raton Pass line in northern New Mexico. They came eastward over Raton and onward all the way to Chicago where they were interchanged to the C&NW at McCook via the IHB. The C&NW took them up to Wisconsin Electric’s Oak Creek electric plant just south of Milwaukee, WI.

I went and tracked down the article regarding the movements that was published in the August 93 issue of CTC Boards Railroads Illustrated. It said the movements began in September of 1992 and the contract was good for 15 years. I vaguely recall that these trains quit running shortly after the BNSF merger–say 1996 or so.

Does anyone know why the trains quit running? It doesn’t seem that they took a different route (like via the old BN lines through Omaha). Anyone remember these trains a little better than I do?

Lance

2

You may find search results for York Canyon interesting.

http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/search/SearchResults.aspx?q="York+Canyon"+AND+sectionid%3A111&o=Relevance

3

Coal production was moved to another coal mine that had capacity to produce slightly higher BTU coal at a lower operating cost, IIRC in NW Colorado near Craig (another Cherokee & Pittsburg operation) and York Canyon was shut down.

The underground portion of the York Canyon Mine still had plenty of reserves at the end, not sure about the strip mine side of the operation. The York Canyon branch abandoned in recently (rail still in place) and Ted Turner’s bison roam up in there freely.

Coal Trains doubled the hill routinely to get over Raton into La Junta.

4

I remember the York trains in the 70"s over Cajon, SD-26’s that provided coal for Kasier Fontana. I believe all the mine infrastructure is gone, last I saw the track was still in.

5

Looking up old train watching logs, these trains ran between 1992-1997. The symbol was YCCH (loaded east, CHYC empty west). In 1997 BNSF changed its symbol system to the silly six letter code which then became CHIYCC/YCCCHI. There were two train sets used on this shuttle service.