During the 70s there was very little traffic on the Tucumcari Line, maybe one to three freight trains a day. Under the old train order system train 993 is rumbling upgrade at Arabella, NM on May 17, 1978 with engine 6575 and CRI&P engines 389, 385, and 263. Trains were infrequent but long. Trains typically ran from 100 to almost 200 cars. The normal routine was for a Tucumcari crew to take the first half of a westbound train to Gallinas, eight miles beyond the summit at Corona. There the crew would set out the entire train on the siding. It would then run around the train with the power, pick up the caboose, and return to Tucumcari. Another crew would use the same power to take the second half of the train west to El Paso. It would pick up the first half of its train at Gallinas and hope to make it all the way to El Paso before dying on the law. Although this routine required the use of an extra crew, it save the railroad from having to assign extra engines to Tucumcari to get heavy westbounds over the hill at Corona and made meets easier since most of the sidings were only about five thousand feet long.

After the purchase of the Rock Island trackage to Kansas City, traffic on this line picked up to about ten freight trains in each direction per day. Traffic picked up again after the merger with the Union Pacific. The crew change at Tucumcari was then moved to Vaughn and this has balanced the length of the crew districts.

SP Introduction

WCKCM Los Tanos, NM