Re: Alamosa East Yard ng. rail?

John West Wrote:
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> In another post I mentioned that when I was
> chasing the ng. in the 1960's I either had no
> knowledge of or no interest in the East Yard,
> despite many visits to Alamosa during that time.
> Earl mentioned that the lead into the ice house
> was probably three rail. More generally I wonder
> how much of the East Yard was narrow gauge or
> three rail. I was thinking all or most of the ng.
> switching was done downtown or in the "West Yard"
> toward Antonito (did it have another name?).
>
> Some of my pix show ng. reefers in service during
> the 60's and I always assumed that meant they were
> still in refrigerator service. But I more
> recently read they were pushed into service to
> handle bagged drilling mud due to the shortage of
> boxcars. I wonder when the last reefer traffic
> was handled on the ng., clearly it would a prime
> target by both the railroad and shippers to move
> to substitute truck service.
>
> JBWX

The only dual gauge trackage I know of out in east yard was the spur to the icehouse, and at one time they did some pipe transfer work out there. Offically, there was "east yard", "west yard" In town), "farm yard" (south of town, a sort of arrival and departure yard for long NG trains), and the world famous "pickler yard".