Nostalgia & History > Rio Grande SD45's leading Coletto Creek coal trains

In the early 1990's, the route that the coal train running between Coletto Creek, Texas and the Axial Mine located on the Craig branch in Colorado used a combination of Southern Pacific, Burlington Northern and ex-Rio Grande trackage. All three railroads (SP and D&RGW had merged in 1988 but the Rio Grande was still somewhat independent as the SP "influence" had not quite spread to Rio Grande rails yet) provided motive power to this train resulting in any combination of D&RGW, BN and SP engines seen.

It also was apparent that Rio Grande's choice of engine to provide for this train was usually their older SD45's.
Here are three examples of a single Rio Grande SD45 leading some sort of a combination of BN and SP engines.

1)Early in the morning on a day in October of 1990, Rio Grande 5339 leads four Burlington Northern engines (a pair of SD40-2's 8100 and 7075 along with a pair of C30-7's, 5522 and 5567) South down Main #1 on the Joint Line South of Castle Rock.

2)Another Southbound coal train "pours it on" as it heads into Sedalia, also on Main #1 of the Joint Line South out of Denver, Colorado back on August 10th, 1990.
Rio Grande 5325 is in charge with the SP 9328, BN 6779, SP 7352 and SP 6778 following behind.

3)Heading South out Denver at 20th Street, the Rio Grande 5339 is once again in charge of coal train #708 (AICLC in SP terminology) but instead of the all BN that it was seen leading in the first picture, now it has all SP engines behind it! The SP engines seen on this day, April 7, 1990 were the SP 7334 with no lettering on the side, 7428, 8529 and 7671. As a side note, the burnt out building in the background has been fixed up and now is a condominium complex!

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NEAT!

~RGDave

Great views of what I would see in the early 90s while driving up Santa Fe Drive. Thanks for the memories!

Ryan Wilkerson
Fair Oaks, CA

Grande photos indeed!- THX- Steve

I can here them EMDs digging in that second pic! It sounds gooooood!

Nice stuff! I always admired the big SD-45 wearing Rio Grande livery. Even if the orange lettering & trim got dirty these big brutes still had that 'working man' appeal.

Lance

Those SD45's on the DRGW sure earned their keep!

Nice consist and nice shots!!

Great stuff!

Great bunch!
JB

That building in the background in #3 is the Longmont Mill. We had a lot of strange things going on in and around that building while I worked for the BN. There is a silo at the north end of the building (you're looking north in this shot) that became a central entrance way when they added the addition to this when it was converted into condos. A staircase that came out on the track side was covered in graffiti from the days of street urchins (homeless folks) that was not repainted when the building was converted. A friend of mine who lived in one of those units for several years gave me a tour of the place after the conversion.

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

Great series. Really like the angle and lighting in photo #1.

~Ryan

In the 1990 - 1991 period the Grande seemed to prefer to use the SD45's for the pooled power trains south of Denver and keep the T-2's and 50's for Moffat. Several times this train or the Celanese (Kings Mill, TX) train went south with 5 units sets of SD45's. Sunday afternoons and evenings you could catch quite a few SD45s around North Yard, especially on the Y tail track ready to go south.

SWEET!!