Since 1988, the PRB is the single larg- est source of coal mined in the United States, with seams of ultra-low sulfur sub-bituminous coal as much as 100 feet thick just under the surface. PRB mines supply 40 percent of the approximately one billion tons of coal used each year in the United States, in power plants in 36 states as far east as Pennsylvania and Georgia, as far south as Texas and Loui- siana, and north into Canada.
Sterling to Brush
Sterling is a crew change point, and at times several long BNSF coal, unit grain, and freight trains will be waiting in the large yard at the eastern edge of town. Union Pacific runs an occasional
local job down from Julesburg, Colo., to Sterling. At the east end of Sterling (BNSF MP 115.1, UP MP 57.5) BNSF trains enter UP rails and leave the An- gora Sub and enter the Brush Subdivi- sion, and for the next two dozen miles west to Union (BNSF MP 138.6; UP MP 81.1) are on the Julesburg Subdivision of UP’s North Platte Area. From Union trains are again on BNSF rails for the final 11.4 miles south into Brush, before
the 87-mile run southwest into Denver. (Union is not a town, but the former junction of this UP line with the BNSF’s line south to Brush. The old town here was called Pawnee and served as a rail- road post office between 1903 and 1944.) The UP section from Sterling is the re- maining portion of the line built in 1881 from the UP’s transcontinental Sherman Hill line at Julesburg, west into La Salle to join UP’s Cheyenne, Wyo., to Denver
RIGHT: A southbound BNSF coal load ap- proaches Palmer Lake in dramatic late af- ternoon winter sun light. BELOW: A manifest freight led by SD40-2 No. 8014 is southbound at Spruce spur beside Spruce Mountain Road, about three miles north of Palmer Lake. OP- POSITE: Still wearing its 1990s “Grinstein” paint, BNSF SD70MAC No. 9704 leads through the S-curve 2.5 miles north of Palmer Lake by the Spruce Mountain Ranch. Just behind the train is the location of one of the crossovers of Rio Grande and Santa Fe tracks before the USRA mandated joint operation for better rail efficiency during World War I.
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