Western Railroad Discussion > Dragoon AZ UP track changes...

I'm doing some computer-side recon of the UP tracks East of Benson, Arizona, and I noticed a lot of very obvious alignment changes on the curves. When were these done, and was it all done during the same period of reconstruction?
TIA

A lot of those were done in the 1960s.
When I worked on the Tucson Division they were proud of how they involved the engineering students at the Univ. of AZ.
The first year they worked on the design of the new alignment, the second year they got to visit them during construction.
The original Sunset route was built, like most land grant RRs., to a design that favored quick completion  and low cost over future operating efficiency.
As these RRs matured and developed robust levels of traffic investments to achieve improved operating efficiency could be justified, a process that continues today.
Edward Harriman famously invested in the UP to the extent that their capacity tripled with no increase in operating costs.

Not sure if it would be evident on Google Earth, but there is also the location out there around MP 1048 between Sibyl and Tully where the train carrying bombs blew up in May 1973 leaving a huge crater.
https://tucson.com/news/retrotucson/photos-munitions-explosion-on-tucson-bound-train-in-1973/collection_f27d5a68-f997-11e4-b5f9-fbbae243407d.html#12

This was just a month after the Roseville incident, and was not as widely reported in that there were no casualities and it occurred in a remote area.

mike woodruff
spokane

there's a story out there (written in a book about the Blue Streak Merchandise train) that in the early 60's, SP president DJRussel was on an inspection trip over the sunset route. One of the division superintendents told him the BSM could save about 10 minutes time by putting a $1M curve redesign into Dragoon pass. And because DJR was always 100% committed to winning any competition, he did go along with it. You can see the old alignments on GoogEarth, and you can see the new alignments have concrete drainage culverts with dates from the 60's today. Those alignment changes are on the west side of the pass close to the summit.

"Railroads Of Arizona, Vol 1" by Myrick cover the realignments well.

Some line changes to look for, from the UP track charts:
West of Benson there were 1892, 1900 and 1906 line changes.
1962 line change from MP 1037.39, 0.7 mile west of the Fenner Hot Box Detector, to MP 1040.26, 2 miles west of the Sibyl Xovers.
1892 line change from MP 1042.2, 1.4 miles west of Sibyl Xovers, to MP 1051.9, just east of Tully HBD.  Within that was a short 1946 line change about 0.4 miles long starting at MP 1044.1.
"MP 1054.03 [just east of Dragoon Road Xing] The Johnson- Dragoon And Northern Ry.- Constructed 1909”, “From MP 1054.03 To MP 1062.16 (Johnson) Abandoned 5-23-1925.”
"Constructed By The Southern Pacific Railroad Co. Of Arizona- 1880”.
“2nd Main Track Constructed By Southern Pacific- 1995”, Mescal to MP 1055.3, 1.4 miles east of Dragoon Road Xing.  From there to MP 1065.5 (just east of US 191), “2nd Main Track Constructed By U.P.R.R. 2001”.  From there to Raso the 2nd Main was built in 2008.

mapboy

One of those track changes can be seen at this Google map link.   I am sure that the time saved and curves reduced was worth the cost.