Two trains meet near Palmer Lake, Colorado, at a location know as “Sag” or Spruce. When the Santa Fe built its line between Colorado Springs and Denver, Rio Grande was already there, and per agreements, had to utilize several flyovers. One of these is seen here between the trains. In 1918, Colorado and Southern (later, Burlington Northern)/Santa Fe and Rio Grande began a joint operating agreement and the Joint Line was born. The tracks were realigned and crossovers were eliminated to simplify operations. But the 1974 removal of the Santa Fe route through Colorado Springs created a single-track bottleneck between Palmer Lake and Crews. In this photo on the right, a southbound Union Pacific coal train waits at the approach signal for single track at Palmer Lake, and is meeting a northbound Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal empty led by a pair of BNSF Grinstein-painted EMD SD70MACs.
