CBQ CB&Q / C&S / FW&D questions

Skyraider Mar 5, 2023

  1. Skyraider

    Skyraider TrainBoard Member

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    My wife and I live in West Central TX. We used to live in Colorado Springs, CO. 60 years ago the C&S and FW&D were active railroads in the areas we have lived in.

    My layout is a fictitious rendering of both of those areas and represents the railroads, industries and agriculture that built those areas. As a result, I'm not a rivet counter but like to have the proper railroads on the layout.

    Does anyone know if the C&S ran 2-10-2's down to Texline or did they stay in the northern part of Colorado and over to Kansas and Illinois? The C&S became the FW&D at either Texline or Dalhart--I forget which.

    Thanks for any info that you can share.
     
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  2. acptulsa

    acptulsa TrainBoard Member

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  3. Skyraider

    Skyraider TrainBoard Member

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    Palmer Lake was the most southern location of any of the photos I saw. Thanks for posting that.
     
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  4. Skyraider

    Skyraider TrainBoard Member

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    Forgot to include that Palmer Lake was where I did most of my trainwatching while living in Colorado Springs. It was at the top of Palmer Divide at 7200'. The joint line climbed it from Denver and it then descended into Colorado Springs. The AT&SF, the D&RGW and the BN were the frequent users of the joint line when I lived there the first time. Later it was the BNSF and the UP. Between the mergers, no more cabooses and the predominance of coal trains, I seldom did much train watching after the year 2000.

    Palmer Lake was a terrific place to watch trains. It was a beautiful location at 7200' on the edge of the front range (mountain range just to the west), with the tracks winding downhill towards Denver through a vast cattle ranch. The west side track was south bound while the east side track was north bound. It became single main from Palmer Lake down to Colorado Springs.

    Helpers were always used on the trip south from Denver. Due to their operations and the type of cabooses they used, the D&RGW wouldn't push on the back of a caboose, instead locating the helper unit(s) in front of the caboose. As a result, they had to stop the train, uncouple the caboose, do a run-around and push the caboose back onto the back of the train. It made for great rail-fanning.

    At the time I raced bicycles, so I would bicycle from our home to Palmer Lake to watch trains. It was a 45 mile round trip on the mountain bike (trails and bike paths the entire way--no vehicular traffic). It made for just about a perfect day. A great round trip on the bicycle wrapped around a couple of hours of train watching.

    The vast majority of my railfanning was done before the advent of affordable digital photography. As a result, very few of the photographs are digitized. Attached are a few digital shots taken while cycling.

    IMG_20150328_121557_361.jpg Rock Island Trail.jpg IMG_20160713_125550_598.jpg IMG_20160713_125601_408.jpg IMG_20160607_134615_198.jpg IMG_20160607_135139_554.jpg IMG_20171201_120229_354.jpg IMG_20180525_120728_682.jpg Picture 064.jpg Picture 061.jpg
     
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  5. Hardcoaler

    Hardcoaler TrainBoard Member

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    My wife and I were out that way only once and had a fine time. These are slide scans. [Larkspur, CO 10/19/1996 and Palmer Lake, CO 10/26/1996]

    1996-10-19 001 Larkspur CO - for upload.jpg

    1996-10-26 001 Palmer Lake CO - for upload.jpg
     
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  6. Kurt Moose

    Kurt Moose TrainBoard Member

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    EMD 6346 is an ex-Milw unit!(y)
     
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