Dispatcher

The BNSF/UP railroad "Joint Line" runs from Denver to Pueblo with trains from both railroads running between the two cities. The joint line begins as a triple track railroad in Denver through milepost 12.2 in Littleton. Then it becomes a double track all the way to Palmer Lake. South of C470 the two tracks are seperated due to them actaully belonging to two different railroads - originally the Denver and Rio Grande Western and the Santa Fe railroads. Today, they are Union Pacific and BNSF respectively.

It was in 1918 during World War I when the two became the "Joint Line" with the track on the west for soutbound trains and the track on the east for northbound trains. Since the two lines crossed at several places (one being near Sedalia and another just north of Palmer Lake at a location called Spruce), which railroad is on which side varies.

Since there are two railroads involved, the joint line is dispatched by both the BNSF and the UP.

If you have a scanner radio that can listen in on the railroad frequencies, you can hear the dispatchers talking with the train crews. You can also hear automated detectors that can check trains for problems as they go by. There are detectors for each track near Louviers. You might hear something like: "BNSF detector milepost 21.3. No defects. Total axles 514. Detector out." If that was for a coal train, it would most likely have had 4 locomotives with 6 axles each for a total of 24 axles. The remaining 480 axles would mean that there were 120 four axle coal hoppers.

The main railroad frequencies are in the range 159.810 to 161.565 megahertz. Union Pacific uses 160.920 while BNSF uses 160.650 for the joint line.

You do not need a railroad radio scanner to solve this puzzle but you do need to figure out something about each of these frequencies:

160.695
160.590
160.245
161.430
160.260
160.875
160.620
161.175 (last digit)

Additional Waypoints

029H07E - Closest Parking
N 39° 32.990 W 105° 01.276

P09H07E - Parking
N 39° 32.797 W 105° 01.400