ABOVE: Northbound grain empty GHVCDR crosses the 875 foot-long 63rd Street steel via- duct in Kansas City’s Swope Park on April 4, 2015. A unit in the older KCS gray paint leads two Retro Belles. RIGHT: Southbound QKCNL is about to cross Main Street at the north end of the siding in Grandview on October 26, 2014. It will pick up intermodal and auto cars at the nearby IFG CenterPoint yard. CARL GRAVES


There are also challenges. Foreign power, especially BNSF and Union Pacific, will pull the other five to six trains you will normally see. Some once-viable vantage points are no longer accessible due to fences, foliage, and increased security. In addition, the line’s north-south orientation means that for much of the year, northbounders will be backlit. I have found, however, that the positives outweigh the negatives, which is why I am as enthusiastic about this KCS line as I was when I first saw it in the 1970s.


Mainline and Yards The Pittsburg Sub begins at Knoche


Yard in Kansas City, and heads south along Missouri’s western border before it veers west to the southeast Kansas crew change point of Pittsburg (milepost 128.2), home to a small yard and office. Located in the middle of the Kansas


City metro area, Knoche (pronounced “kuh-NO-key”) Yard is a joint facility shared with the Canadian Pacific. It


32 NOVEMBER 2015 • RAILFAN.COM


contains a tower and dozens of tracks often overflowing with cars, although the 2008 opening of a COFC/TOFC facility south of the city allowed KCS to close the crowded intermodal facility at Knoche. In contrast the small city of Pittsburg


has a modest four-track yard parallel to the mainline. There is also a one- story yard office and a small siding with crossovers to allow the addition of distributed power (DP) locomotives to high-tonnage southbounds for the


steep up-and-down grades in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The heavy 136-pound welded mainline connecting these two distant yards is a single track route with eight passing sidings. Grandview, Drexel, Eve, and Mulberry sidings are more than 10,000 feet long, while Blue Valley, Jaudon, Amsterdam, and Hume sidings range in length from 6,792 to 8,583 feet. All of the line is centralized traffic control (CTC), with approach-lit signals and passing


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