Western Railroad Discussion > The Montrose Local

Union Pacific runs a Local out of Grand Junction once-a-week, every Tuesday down the North Fork Branch to Montrose. On Wednesday the train returns back from Montrose to Grand Jct. There are now less than a half dozen customers for this Local to serve and UP seems intent on "running off" the remaining business so I have tried to make it a point to shoot this Local while I can before it is gone:{

1) On December 18th, GP40-2's UP #1350 and #1479 follow along the Gunnison River, South of the siding at Whitewater. Today's train has 6 ballast cars to be dumped at Roubideau, 4 cars of Feed for Foster Farms at Delta, 2 Lumber cars for the Truss Plant located North of Montrose and 2 cars of Urea for Olathe.

2) On New Year's Day, GP60 #1019 and GP40-2 #1479 head East down the Branch, again just South of Whitewater. Today's train includes an empty gon for scrap loading at Montrose and Feed hoppers for Delta. My dogs enjoyed the snow on this day as well:}

3) On January 15th, the local departs out of Grand Junction across the bridge over the Colorado River. Today's train had just one car:{ Catching "mini-wing" GP40-2 #1481 leading (along with GP40-2 #1482) was a nice surprise, not sure how many of this type of engine have the wings instead of the shield?

---

---

---

Great to see you covering the branch.  Keep it up!
Tom

Great shots! Love the Local with your dogs looking on. And good job disgusting the one car train in the bridge. :)

Would not be surprised to see Delta South up for sale, great shots, looks nice in snow.

Out

Wow, really like pic#2!, looks like everything got a cold blast of snow the night begore?, including the rock cliffs/hills in the distant background!

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

Just another nail in the Rio Grande , eh?

Excellent series, sir— I visited here in summer 2005 or so and caught some action on this line, too ... Very picturesque and loved the small town way of life, there.
Kind of sad to see it dwindle down to almost nothing — how much coal runs here, now ?!?

Nice scenic shots! And standard cabs to boot! Too bad the UP is trying to do away with the business on that line. You’ve got some great shots and memories from there if they ever do though.

Great photos, thanks for sharing them with us.
TC

SP8595 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> UP seems intent on "running off" the remaining business . . .

Really?  Would a Class One do such a thing?  What's the consumer hotline for the Surface Transportation Board?  LOL!    

Really NICE and interesting series!

Larry

Nice shot of the baby wings and scenic terrain of the area.  Seems a shame that so many locals are threatened nowadays.
Brian Stevens

Great shots!

How many shippers are still active from Grand Junction south?

Are any of the coal mines near Delta working?

TIA!

Z

Really great photos. I especially like #2.

Ronda Thomas

There is only one coal mine remaining, W. Elk Mine which is located at the end of the N. Fork Branch near Paonia.

On the Montrose Industrial Lead, there is Foster Farms in Delta (which is actually on the N. Fork Branch but still served by the Montrose Local)
South of Delta there is the Marble place that no longer ships by rail
At Olathe, they get covered hoppers of Urea in the Winter and Ammonium Nitrate in the Summer. They also used to get tanks of Mag. Chloride but I haven't seen any in almost a year.
North of Montrose is the Truss plant that gets flats of Lumber.
In Montrose, the only customer remaining is a scrap dealer that loads gons with scrap but apparently UP is in some sort of feud with them and currently refuses to serve them!
GMCO, a Mag. Chloride outfit wants to open an unloading facility at Montrose but it has been held up for a long time and I doubt that it will ever happen.
Russell Stover used to get hoppers of Sugar in Montrose but the UP wants them to fix the track that leads into their facility so they have not received any rail cars in years:{


They also used to ship Woodchips out of Montrose, there currently still is a huge pile of chips but I am not sure why that service ended.

Excellent synopsis and you can see the "we want out" fingerprints of the UP all over it. Rather than working
to increase traffic it's easier to drive it off.

Out

Nice pics!!