Re: Santa Fe branch

Tom:
The D&RGW couldn't place anything like that at the end of a third rail as they would have caught on flanger blades or other equipment.
A retired D&RGW engineer told me that the yards at Salida were a particular problem as some yard tracks were dual gauge, some were standard gauge only, and some were narrow gauge only. For example, the upper track on the barrel transfer was narrow gauge only (obvious reason, they never rolled a standard gauge car). Problem was that standard gauge swithers with dual gauge couplers sometimes pushed narrow gauge cars on that upper track. The crew had to know where the dual gauge ended. The newspapers have lots of accounts of derailments in the Salida yards and some were probably due to this problem. This engineer once pushed some narrow gauge cars onto a siding that did not have a third rail. He said they were switching in the dark and the brakeman put them on the wrong track. He said they did not have many problems in Montrose as all the tracks there had a third rail. He didn't know about Alamosa as he seldom went to Alamosa. There were sidings in Alamosa that were narrow gauge only and some that were standard gauge only, so I am sure they had the same problem. Antonito was a problem due to the wye as the third rail switched from one side to the other on the wye. There was a frog arrangment there that John Maxell called the "swish." I am not sure how they handled the dual gauge idler cars.