I was playing with the slide scanner and thought I'd try yet another marginal photo full of interesting and no-longer possible stuff. This shot has some harsh shadows but gets the job done for my purposes. Again, this is Colorado and Southern territory, Fort Collins, Colorado specifically.
I am standing roughly where the old passenger depot was located, looking north down the platform toward the freight depot. At the time of the photo (mid-1970's) the passenger station was long gone but the freight depot was quite active with local business, a round-the-clock station operator, maintenance crews and switcher crews. If I had to guess, this was train #78 which was a Burlington Northern train originating near Seattle and terminating near Fort Worth. It, and it's counterpart #77, came through daily though one would never be able to plan for it. At the time it was among the longest routed trains in the country to run on a single road. At Wendover, Wyoming it left the BN rails (old CB&Q) and hit the C&S (not absorbed by the BN until 1981) which together with the Fort Worth and Denver (a C&S subsidiary) took it to Ft. Worth. This was a typical six axle lashup of power but often there were more units.
The background contains a few other interesting details. The station operator is standing by the train to "hoop up" the orders to the crew. The engineer has his copy so he is waiting for the caboose to come along to give orders to the conductor. (I'll have to show a closer shot of that process in another post now that the "statute of limitations" has probably passed for the individual in the shot.) I got to know one of the operators and would visit now and then when I finished at my job at a downtown restaurant. While visiting I'd be shown how the place worked. He would have to type up orders, finish various clerical duties and sometimes "hoop up" orders to a train. It was all facinating to me. Although he did know morse code, the company did recently switch to phone lines and teletype. The equipment was still in place for backup but just gathered dust. The dispatcher in McCook,NE had an exclusive phone line and that was used for train orders, which were in turn typed on the "flimsy" paper for the crews. The room had a radio set for communications and the telephone pole by the depot has the antenna for it. Typical BN for the day. My favorite machine was the computer. No monitor, just a keyboard and printer with the continuous feed of green and white paper. Train consists, equipment dispositions, schedules and most anything else BN computerized was available. I managed to get small piles of the printouts whenever they needed to be tossed out. Some flimsies and other "trash" might end up in my hands too from time to time. All of this caused additional interest in rail operations.
Another detail lurks in the background. A typical C&S SD9 and caboose are parked for the day across from the depot. Two units were the norm. A daily local over the Greeley branch left here daily. As needed runs up the Rex and Black Hollow branches started here. And, there were still a few local industries to be switched regularly in the local complex of branches and main track.
Time has changed the scene radically. BNSF still uses the line as much as BN did. Two trains each way per day (LAUDEN/DENLAU [Laurel, MT-Denver] and TACDEN/DENTAC [Tacoma,WA-Denver]). All of the yard tracks are gone however. The main was shifted to one of the inner tracks to straighten the routing and the rest were removed by the time I left in the mid 1980's. This essentially extended the well known Mason St. street trackage when the area was paved for new roads, though here the track was not part of the street. Yard operations downsized and moved to North Yard, about 2 miles north and out of town. Anheuser Busch built a brewery north of town so this made some sense. The Rex branch was eventually pulled up most of the way back to town too so that business was gone. I believe the wye area just out of sight is still intact since the Great Western Ry. took over the Greeley branch and they are contracted to switch the brewery. The depot was a pub last I knew but a new shack was built at North Yard. I'm sure the equivalent of Form D's have replaced the depot operator but I have seen units and MOW trucks parked there so maintenance and switching must still go on.
As usual, you can never really go back.
My apologies for any errors in the updates (I'm in Maine!). And Yeehaw! Google can find us now!BC
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