Western Railroad Discussion > Denver Stockyards Tracks to be Relocated

Denver's Stockyards with Denver Rock Island RR tracks slicing through the middle will be removed and new tracks laid next to BNSF's Brush Subdivision in the coming months.  Stockyard cattle pens were being demolished in May and June 2019 at Denver, Colorado.  No sound on attached video.  Tracks currently used by Denver Rock Island (DRI).  New Livestock Center will be constructed in the area currently occupied by these tracks.  

Livestock Center will cover 387,800 gsf housing 1,500 head of cattle, a spacious 3,000 fixed-seat "Stadium Arena", and the capability to more then double the junior market show numbers.  Estimated completion date of the Livestock Center is summer of 2023.

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Nicely explained for us, Chip.  Good post!
 

Your post made me think of stockyards of the olden times.....'40s-'50s.....they were adjacent to the main line, and the stench...it semed to take forever to get past these huge yards.

AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

Chip, thanks for posting. Looks like you are getting pretty good with your drone.

Paul Brennecke
Golden, CO

As the railroads are out of the live cattle movements -- why do the new stockyards need to have any sort of rail service?

Watts local

wattslocal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As the railroads are out of the live cattle
> movements -- why do the new stockyards need to
> have any sort of rail service?
>
> Watts local

I saw nothing that stated there would be.

Thanks for the info, Chip!!

While the tracks were built through the stockyards (and at one time served them), I think I can very confidently say there is no rail service at the stockyard at the present time.

The Denver-Rock Island travels through the stockyards to get to customers and interchaange with the other Denver railroads.

With the pens still so close to the tracks, it is a little confusing. However, despite the pens proximity to the tracks, if they are used, it is for the Denver Stock Show and not for loading or unloading rail cars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/19 03:10 by rrpreservation.

    Not everyone is happy about this, FBI is in the stockyards building.   Many liked the old time feeling, and traditional layout.  Will be missed.

I had a recording studio in the red building across the street (on the right side of most of the video). Those tracks were always used to build up cars for BNSF interchange. I remember during one stock show, a parking operation had parked cars fouling the tracks - BNSF showed up to pick up the cars and the parking operation started using a tow truck to literally drag cars off the tracks (nice perk that comes with the $20 parking bill I guess) 

Eventually the BNSF said forget this and went back to 38th street without any cars.