Rick, you may know the answer to my question off the top of your head. I guess it matters to me now, after all these years, becuase I have been giving more thought to actual operations through Dickey, now that I can actually do something that represents those operations on my small area here in my little "Man spare bedroom". Too small for sure to ever be considered a cave.
Passenger service between Denver and Leadville on the mainline was Train No.70 Westbound, and Train No.71 Eastbound. Rob Smith sent me a photocopy of at least part of the 1922 Schedule. That schedule shows different train numbers for the same trains between Dickey and Dillon. Train No.'s 88 and 89 connecting to the "Westward" No.70 (Monday Wednesday Friday), and Train No.'s 86 and 87 connecting to the "Eastward" No.71 (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday).
As an aside, it is interesting to note that the complete round trip between Dickey and Dillon, 2.7 miles. is only 20 minutes, at an average speed of 16.2 MPH. Rounded to 15MPH and covering a distance of 2.5 miles, it is interesting to note that a train traveling at 60MPH would cover five miles in five minutes. The same train traveling at 30MPH would cover the same five miles in 10 minutes, and the same train travelling at 15MPH would cover that same five miles in 20 minutes at exactly the same amount of time as the schedule indicates. Two things are immediately clear. First, there was no time other than to throw off a mail bag at Dillon, and take on whatever might need to be loaded at Dillon. There was a wye at Keystone, but Keystone was another 4.2 miles up the line. So Trains 86 87, 88, and 89 were not turned, but almost immediately were backed to Dickey, and in the same exact way they arrived. The Westward #70 would have pulled to the front of the abandoned ticket office at the Dickey Depot for the Register to be signed upon arrival, and the register at Dillon would also have been signed. The Easward #71 would have traveled straight through to Dillon on the back leg of the wye behind the Dickey Depot, and then after transferring mail and passengers and signing the register, backed onto the main again upon return to Dickey. Then, proceeding Eastward on the Main line again, the train would stop at the side of the depot to sign the register before heading on to Breckenridge. The timetable indicates "Stop" as I have indicated, for the purpose of signing the register at Dickey.
The train register box, by the way, is visible between the door and the window on the south side of the depot, visible in the header photo on this page.
So now to my question. In Boulder, growing up as a kid on the "North End", our mail and passenger trains were No.'s 29 and 30. We also had "local" freight service, which handled the switching along the line, and regular scheduled freight trains i both directions, No's 77 and 78. So the question of the day is, were the "scheduled" freight trains which travelled "twice a week" in both directions over a four day period assigned train numbers, or were they considered "Extra" trains, identified by the road engines and helpers?
The attached photo was taken before I had worked out the particulars of how the trains traveled through Dickey. In this case, "Eastward" Train No. 71 os posed at the Dickey Depot after having BACKED to Dillon, and is now headed nose first past the depot 20 minutes later. This would possibly have been a more common occurance in warm weather, not so much if they had to plow up into Dillon. That picture looks pretty cold with a promise of snow to me. Taken Thanksgiving Day, right here in Dickey.
Locked
