cago to Denver when completed into the Mile High City in 1882, and is still the route of Amtrak’s California Zephyr.
The Colorado Joint Line
While the Powder River Basin has its own BNSF/UP Joint Line, 93 miles of jointly owned multi-track line between Caballo Junction and Shawnee Junc- tion, the Joint Line in Colorado is the much older multi-tracked route between Denver and Pueblo, currently co-owned and operated by the BNSF and UP. In Denver, the BNSF’s Brush Sub
ends at MP 542.1, meeting the Joint Line which starts at MP 0.0. From here BNSF trains run on the Pikes Peak Sub jointly with the UP’s Colorado Springs Sub for the next 120.4 miles into Pueblo. Several other rail lines in addition to the Brush converge in Denver and con- tribute to traffic over the Joint Line. UP coal loads and BNSF freights come off the UP’s “Moffat Line” (Moffat Tun- nel Subdivision) from western Colorado, and freight and unit grain trains come off BNSF’s Front Range Sub down from Cheyenne. The UP’s Denver Area Limon Subdivision (the 1870 Kansas Pacific line from Kansas City, Kan., which be- came UP in 1880) also converges here, along with BNSF’s Greeley Sub from Borie, Wyo., and the Golden Sub that runs 16 miles west to the Coors Brewery
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in Golden, Colo. This first section of the Joint Line south into the Denver suburb of Littleton at MP 12.2 is triple track with three con- necting crossovers. Main 1, the western track, is UP, with Mains 2 and 3 BNSF. Next is 39.8 miles of double track south into Palmer Lake, with crossover tracks at the former Santa Fe intermodal Big Lift facility at MP 19.3 (now often filled with shipments of new automobiles), and crossovers again just south of Seda- lia. From Littleton for the approximate- ly 12 miles into Sedalia, the southbound
TOP: A short local beside Route 2 at 72nd Ave- nue shuttles tank cars north past the Commerce City oil refineries in the northwest Denver metro area. The white cab on this former BN GP39V was a 1990s attempt to improve the vis- ibility of the approaching train. ABOVE: BNSF 5720 West passes the Commerce City oil refin- eries along Brighton Boulevard. Photography in this area may be problematic due to refinery security guards confronting “suspicious activi- ty,” along with a high volume of truck traffic. OPPOSITE: A southbound coal drag at Bragdon is about ten miles north of Pueblo approaching the end of the “coal corridor.”.
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