The fall sugar beet “campaign” draws Colorado railfans to the UP, the Burlington, Colorado & Southern and the Great Western. Few think of the Rock Island, but on November 6, 1965, a westbound beet extra trundles along near Byers, Colorado, behind F7A 102, a GP9 and a GP7, headed via interchange for one of the refineries north of Denver. The extra is on UP rails, but the beets were picked up somewhere along the Rock Island, perhaps as far away as western Kansas.
