RE: O/T: And Now You Know

[dpb]

And, I don't think there's all that much of W Texas that has dual mainline, anyway, really. I couldn't find a UP route map with sufficient detail in a quick search to confirm, but I've driven the stretch north of Amarillo where there's a goodly-size coal-fired plant burning Powder Basin coal and seen them on sidings there...and there's certainly no double line when get on up across E Colorado. I also travel US 287 from Lamar thru Eads to Limon as it cuts off the 90 corner for us to get to Denver and there's a couple-mile siding along there. It doesn't show on UP route map that I saw but I don't think those maps were any but main routes; not every mile of track. Or, it could be that is an interconnection local line across there; I've not investigated. There's another coal-fired plant W of Garden City, KS, that gets service via an interconnect to the Santa Fe that comes from up across that way as well to/from Powder Basin and/or Wyoming...

[Doug Winterburn]

UP has dual track on most if not all of the route between El Paso and LA. They've been doing ballast work and replacing ties - much with concrete for quite a few years now.

I heard several years ago that their traffic would pick up from 80 to

100 trains a week - or was that a day? - through Casa Grande, AZ. It does seem like one rolls through every 15 minutes or so.

[dpb]

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That's not the part of TX _we_ think of as "West Texas"... :) From Midland/Odessa to Lubbock to Amarillo and Perryton is our idea. Not much dual track line along there.... :)

[Doug Winterburn]

I grew up in Western Washington State. I could never figure out why the network news guys referred to Minnesota, Illinois, etc as being in the "west". And then there's Northwestern University. Strange ...

[John McCoy]

Doug Winterburn wrote in news:549dd64d$0$64301$c3e8da3$ [e-mail]:

Ah, now if you want strange, look up why Case Western Reserve University has "western reserve" in their name...

John

[Lew Hodgett]

----------------------------------------------------------- Pretty straight forward. NorthEast Ohio is in the lands of the Western Reserve which was a set aside if lands in the Connecticut colony weren't sufficient to cover land grants granted there.

To this day, "The Lands of the Western Reserve" is still a popular tag line for many businesses in NE Ohio.

Lew

[Lew Hodgett]

---------------------------------------------- Forgot to mention that prior to the merger, Case and Western Reserve were independent universities that shared many common facilities in the area known as University Circle.

Also included in the physical area was the FP Bolton School of Nursing..

Lew

[Martin Eastburn]

Trains run east west from Dallas. The Main heavy line runs from San Antonio and stays south and moves north of Big Bend on the line to the Rio Grande and then north into El Paso. Was 3 oil/gas refineries there and Army and Air Force bases. Then onward to LA or to Pheonix...

It runs north from LA though to (I want to say) Washington.

Martin

[Martin Eastburn]

The West starts in Ft. Worth and moves westward up through the Pan Handle and down through the Big Bend - ending at the Rio Grande (or once did ) in El Paso. Now the Rio is in Mexico and we end where the President (Kennedy) decided where the river was 150 years before... The buildings and businesses lost their places in life and were forced to move out. I don't know what kind of deal they got, but their placement was poor.

Martin

[Dave from SoTex]

When the San Andreas fault lets go at 9.something, California will no longer be a problem. If it stays above water, it will be an island. Probably useful as a prison island, as there will be no fresh water other than captured rainwater - but they probably don't allow that...

It's not too late to get some beachfront property in Yuma.

Dave in SoTex

[Dave from SoTex]

UP has dual track on most if not all of the route between El Paso and LA. They've been doing ballast work and replacing ties - much with concrete for quite a few years now.

UP acquired a lot of that double track when it swallowed the Southern Pacific [thank you, Phillip Anshutz]. That would certainly account for it between New Orleans and L.A. It is surprising they are going concrete with their ties, something that has been common in Europe for decades, not very much in the U.S. I worked a summer as a laborer at the SP creosoting plant on the east end of their Englewood rail yard [Wallisville Road and Lockwood Drive]. Ugly, smelly stuff. Lots of wood though!

Dave in soTex

[dpb]

On 12/27/2014 8:42 AM, Dave from SoTex wrote: ...

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The UP line here is the old Rock Island mainline...they've been upgrading it to continuous rail as well that runs Chicago-El Paso. I can well imagine in the southern areas from New Orleans to Houston to (say) San Antonio the concrete ties would pay where it's wetter; would think W TX and across to LA "not so much". They're using traditional wood ties up here on all I've seen, anyway...

But there's very little dual line...

I _still_ don't think of El Paso to LA as lines _thru_ "West Texas"... :)

PS. BTW, I did find a different UP map that _does_ show the eastern branch from Amarillo to Denver via Boise City, OK, Lamar, CO, so it is, as I thought, UP. But there's no double track on that route all the way to/from coal country that I'm aware of...

[John McCoy]

"Dave from SoTex" wrote in news:5zznw.986236$ [e-mail]:

The SP was a single track railroad. All the double track between LA and El Paso is recent, stuff UP has put in since the intermodal business between LA and Chicago took off.

Double track ends at El Paso because the UP splits three ways there - the Rock Island line thru Amarillo to Chicago, the Missouri Pacific line to Dallas, and the SP line to Houston and New Orleans.

Axle loads in Europe are far far less than in the US (one axle of a US freight car carries more weight than an entire car in Europe). It took a while to develop a technology to make concrete ties that would withstand those loads. That said, concrete ties have been the norm for mainline track in the US for the last 20 years or so. Wood is still preferred for secondary lines.

John

[dpb]

On 12/27/2014 9:38 AM, John McCoy wrote: ...

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As noted earlier, we're on the old Rock Island line--in fact, town exists where it does as this was the terminus for a number of years before opening Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to let them continue building across it.

[Dave in Texas]

On 12/27/2014 8:42 AM, Dave from SoTex wrote: ...

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The UP line here is the old Rock Island mainline...they've been upgrading it to continuous rail as well that runs Chicago-El Paso. I can well imagine in the southern areas from New Orleans to Houston to (say) San Antonio the concrete ties would pay where it's wetter; would think W TX and across to LA "not so much". They're using traditional wood ties up here on all I've seen, anyway...

Not that I would necessarily know but I am unaware of any concrete ties in use in the Gulf coast region of Texas. Every time I see track restoration in progress there are bundles of creosoted wood ties spread up and down the track.

But there's very little dual line...

I _still_ don't think of El Paso to LA as lines _thru_ "West Texas"... :)

PS. BTW, I did find a different UP map that _does_ show the eastern branch from Amarillo to Denver via Boise City, OK, Lamar, CO, so it is, as I thought, UP. But there's no double track on that route all the way to/from coal country that I'm aware of...

I don't know for a fact but that segment is very likely old Denver & Rio Grande Western [parent company: Rio Grande Industries] which is where the Phillip Anshutz reference comes into play. the Anshutz family was the DRGW and in the 1980s [I believe] Phillip, as head of the company, borrowed $1.07 billion to purchase the Southern Pacific. That eventually lead to his merging it with the UP in the mid-90s. As I recall, Anshutz got a seat on the board of directors.

Dave in SoTex

[dpb]

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I don't know, either, but I doubt it was D&RGW on the line from Denver to Amarillo, via Lamar...the Pueblo/Denver branch on west has much higher likelihood as Pueblo was early steel/coal area but I'd be extremely surprised to learn that the eastern line has been around anyways nearly that long bac...but, I've not done any looking into it at all.

[John McCoy]

dpb wrote in news:m7mv1r$nqg$ [e-mail]:

Surprised there's so much railroad interest here.

Anyway, the line from Amarillo up toward Lamar is and always has been Santa Fe - it doesn't actually go to Lamar, it bends west to La Junta.

The Rio Grande doesn't go anywhere east of the foothills - it got as far south as Trinidad then found itself blocked by the Santa Fe. The Rio Grande (now UP) and the Santa Fe (now BNSF) parallel each other from Denver to Pueblo, they share each other's track so it's effectively double track.

The line from middle of nowhere up thru Limon to Denver was originally the Kansas Pacific, which was basically a stock promoters scam back in 1869. UP took it over in 1880.

John

[dpb]

On 12/27/2014 2:25 PM, John McCoy wrote: ...

Nothin' else much goin' on over the weekend... :)

That's the one the UP CO map shows, the nationwide one at

shows both. The eastern branch basically parallels US 287 which is the main truck route from Denver to Amarillo. I've driven that enough to have seen too many trains to know it isn't Santa Fe (BNSF, now, of course). Whether it was at one time or not I couldn't say but the Kansas Pacific doesn't sound right to me for the Amarillo-Denver eastern section, either...afaik they never ran anything except the northern branch thru Kit Carson and on to Denver and those environs north.

It'd likely would have been about that time and possible was another one of the short-lived ideas to try to bring TX cattle up to the Denver markets that wouldn't have been a bad idea other than lack of anything else between to make up any other traffic.

The branch I'm speaking of does, however, go on up past Lamar, not west to Pueblo...

Again, this is all just what I "know" from dad/grandfather from growing up in SW KS. Grandfather worked for Santa Fe in Argentine (KS, now surrounded by KCK) until decided after a wheat harvest helping his brother that he like farming better than railroading so they homestead here together a few years later.

There was the old K&O (KS and OK) shortline that later on tried to do a similar collection from the RI terminal in Liberal down to various spots in the OK panhandle east of the RI mainline that went on to Guymon and SW to Dalhart, TX. It lasted only a short time, too, for lack of enough density in grain/cattle production to make it pay. The old railbed location still shows as a hump in our dirt road on the way to town and is slicker 'n glass in wet weather owing to the hard clay/caliche they used in the roadbed grade...

[John McCoy]

dpb wrote in news:m7nb4k$54n$ [e-mail]:

OK, now I'm confused. Usually when I go that way I go up thru Dalhart and across the corner of NM to I-25, but I have taken the US287 route a couple of times. I'm pretty sure there isn't a railroad paralleling US287 at Lamar...BNSF (with UP trackage rights) parallels it from Amarillo to just over the CO border where it bends off to La Junta (and eventually Pueblo), which I'm pretty sure is the line the UP map shows. And at Kit Carson you pick up the KP line up to Limon and Denver. But in between, other than crossing the Santa Fe and Missouri Pacific lines, I don't recall there being any railroad alongside US287.

John

[dpb]

Coming from farther south, that makes sense...we're starting from north of Dalhart (but east, of course), so we have to follow the N-S routes of which there are several choices but absolutely no mileage difference until get up to US50 to Lamar to pick up 287 to cut off the corner. Otherwise it's straight N all the way to Colby to I70 which are the two sides of the triangle...

IIRC, it's several miles N of Lamar before you can see any signs and then it's not directly alongside but off to the west. Good chance never notice it unless you see the trains; it's that far enough away from the actual road...

I couldn't seem to find a map that has both rail and roads on it any more to see more detail...