STEAM TRAINS AND DIESEL FREIGHTS IN THE ROCKIES
COLORADO RAILROADS Special 2016
Main lines, commuter trains, and tourist roads • History • Current operations • Map: 1939 & today
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COLORADO RAILROADS 6 18 20 28 30 40 42 52 60 64 70 72 76 84 86 94 98
GRANDEST RAILROAD STATE • Mark W. Hemphill MAP: 1939 AND 2016 • Bill Metzger DENVER UNION STATION • Karl Zimmermann HIGHEST STANDARD GAUGE • Brian Schmidt MOFFAT TUNNEL ROUTE • Mike Danneman PIKES PEAK COG RAILWAY • Jef Terry JOINT LINE TRAFFIC JAM • Steve Patterson COLORADO RAILROAD MUSEUM • Jef Terry ROYAL GORGE ROUTE SPLENDOR • Mike Danneman DENVER COMMUTER TRAINS • Brian Schmidt 10 PLACES YOU MUST SEE • Jef Terry STEAM POWER GALORE • Jim Wrinn DURANGO & SILVERTON • Tyler Trahan RHYTHM AND RAILS • Jim Wrinn CLIMBING CUMBRES PASS • Jim Wrinn LOOPING THROUGH HISTORY • Jim Wrinn LOOKING TO THE FUTURE IN PUEBLO • Kathi Kube
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Rio Grande Ski Train roars through Rocky, Colo., above. Drew Mitchem Amtrak’s California Zephyr rolls through Gore Canyon. Mike Danneman
ON THE COVER: Durango & Silverton 2-8-2 No. 473 leads a photographers’ mixed train southbound out of Silverton, Colo. Nathan Zachman
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Colorado’s Vintage Railways Vacation Mesa Verde National Park
8 days • 7 nights • 12 meals Jul 17-24, 2016 • Sep 11-18, 2016 Departs/Return: Denver On this amazing trip, rail lovers will experience five spectacular rail journeys through breathtaking Rocky Mountain passes, forests and gorges… see history come to life at an old stagecoach town (featuring America’s last coal tipple), mining camp and Anasazi Indian village, and so much more! • Royal Gorge Scenic • Cumbres & Toltec Scenic • Durango & Silverton RR & Museum • Georgetown Loop • BONUS: Pikes Peak Cog Railway • Great Sand Dunes National Park • Mesa Verde National Park option • Garden of the Gods • U.S. Air Force Academy • Vail Mountain Resort • Durango Your Way This super-inclusive Colorado vacation only $1,697 per person (double), $2,175 single. TRAINS-Only Special: SAVE $50.00 pp! Use code TRAINS16 by 6/1/16! Full info at CountryTravelDiscoveries.com/TRAINS or 855-744-TRIP.
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COLORADO RAILROADS
COLORADO: Never enough!
On Aug. 11, 2015, a westbound Union Pacific freight claws upgrade through the Big 10 Curve near Rocky, Colo.
COLORADO HAS LONG BEEN a
dream destination. Growing up far away in the 1970s, all of those John Denver songs about the beauty and grandeur of the Rocky Mountains hooked me. When I made my irst visit in 1987, I reluctantly went home. It was that magniicent and enchanting. Colorado railroads are fascinating for their grades, curves, tunnels, bridges, and the audacious routes across terrifying mountain peaks. he hunt for gold and silver, the allure of narrow gauge, the Mofat Route, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, are all incredible stories of men, mountains, and machines. Unfortunately, much Colorado railroad history has been lost, but preservation railways and museums keep alive the stories of the people, places, and trains that once crisscrossed this rugged land. Today’s Colorado railroad saga is still
enthralling: Heavy-duty freight routes, a rebirth for a landmark depot, the nation’s test lab for railroad technology, and, amazingly, the latest and most expansive additions to commuter and light rail. he story of Colorado railroads didn’t end when the narrow gauge quit hauling freight almost 50 years ago or when the Rio Grande folded into Southern Paciic in the 1990s. It continues on in the rails that climb toward loty snow-covered peaks, in the railroaders adept at both throttle and brakes on steep grades, and in the heart of a land so beautiful that you can never have enough of it. Welcome to Colorado Railroads!
TR A I NS : Tom Danneman
T R A I N S M A G A Z I N E S P E C I A L E D I T I O N N O. 16 - 2 016
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With 2-8-2 No. 484 on the head, a narrow gauge Cumbres & Toltec Scenic train arrives in Antonito, Colo., where standard gauge rails once came to an abrupt halt. TR A I NS : Jim Wrinn www.TrainsMag.com
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The enormous challenge of building railroads in the Rockies is evident in this view of the Colorado Midland’s desperate climb to Hagerman Pass in 1888. Tracks at right climb from the Arkansas Valley at Leadville to the tunnel out of sight on the left. W.H. Jackson
Loops, tunnels, bridges, and grades were basic components of Colorado railroads; the mountains made nothing easy for railroaders. In this 1904 scene, a construction train on the Moffat line poses while a timber gang finishes the tunnel at Rifle Sight Notch. Colorado Historical Societ y
here was gold and silver, and thus railroads. Had nature not impregnated Colorado’s mountains with precious metals, they would also be barren of railroads. here was nothing else suicient to induce their construction. Heavy timber on a California or Cascades scale? Colorado’s mountains are too cold and too high. Agriculture on an Iowa scale? Too dry. Coal mines? Now there was a possibility — Colorado had and still has substantial coal reserves — but without precious metals there wasn’t much of a market. When you consider that the entire Mountain Time Zone still has only 5.4 percent of the U.S. population, it becomes clear that most of the factories
and cities fueled by coal weren’t in the same time zone. Only because there was gold and silver, and smelters to reine ores into bullion, and mining towns, and foundries and mills to forge and fabricate mining machinery, and locomotives to bring victuals and hopefuls to those mining towns, was there reason to mine coal and build railroads into the mountains. Certainly, there would have been branch lines pushed up into Colorado’s high plains from the Missouri River. Eventually. Branch lines would have dropped into the thin fertile valleys of the Platte and Arkansas rivers, which trickle from the mountains onto the plains and sketch lazily into Nebraska and Kansas, until every muddy drop has been lapped up by a cow or soaked up by a corn
stalk. here would have been no haste to build these branch lines. Instead of the railroad arriving in Denver just 13 months ater trains touched at Promontory, a decade might have passed while farmers fumed and storekeepers struggled. Without gold and silver, there would have been no rational thought of any main lines passing beyond the point where the basement sandstone suddenly erupts through the grassy plains into a brokentooth warning, “Beyond Here Be Mountains.” Yes, a railroad would have skirted the Front Range from Cheyenne, Wyo., south past Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, connecting pastoral communities, delivering merchandise, collecting cattle, cabbages, and a few dusty passengers,
COLORADO RAILROAD HISTORY TIMELINE JUNE 1867
JUNE 23, 1870
OCT. 26, 1871
Union Pacific builds 9 miles of track near Julesburg, the first railroad in Colorado Territory.
First Denver Pacific train arrives in Denver from Cheyenne after main line bypasses the city to the north.
First Denver & Rio Grande train runs Denver to Colorado Springs. Power was steam locomotive Montezuma.
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COLORADO RAILROADS
AUG. 31, 1872 Colorado Central completes narrow gauge track, Golden to Forks Creek, first rail line to enter the Rocky Mountains.
1877 Only 5 years old, Arkansas Valley Railway, Kit Carson to La Junta, becomes the state’s first abandonment.
If not for gold and silver, why go here? Colorado & Southern 2-8-0 No. 73 follows 3-foot-gauge tracks toward the summit of Kenosha Pass, high above the canyon near Webster, Colo., on July 14, 1938. Soon these tracks of the South Park Line will be abandoned. R.H. Kindig
and feeding traic to their superiors to the north and south. A few steel ingers could have poked into some canyons here or there to reach a limestone quarry, or a coal mine or two. But four ambitious railroads scaling Colorado’s ramparts, two with out-of-thegate transcontinental aspiration? Not likely. he nation’s transcontinental commerce would have navigated freely to the north and south on the Union Paciic and the Santa Fe, curving across Wyoming’s lumpy prairie and New Mexico’s deceitfully dry washes. And, of these mountains of Colorado, which would impart superlatives to the epics of railroading, we would know nothing. hey would be as enigmatic on the U.S. map of railroads as the Salmon River Wilderness of Idaho, or the Wile E. Coyote canyons of
the Four Corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, or the weirdly topsyturvy volcanic plateaus of southeastern Oregon. You might only see them from the window of a 737 at 38,000 feet. Like the Salmon River Wilderness, you would study Colorado’s rivers shining beneath the evening sun in the smoky sky of a summer evening, and wonder, “Are any of these river routes feasible for a railroad?” More likely, you would look with discouragement on the narrow canyons abruptly blind-ending at a mountain range scooped with glacial cirques, shooting 3,000 feet higher than any tree can grow. If someone said, “A good railroad engineer could have found a way out of this canyon, without building a 6-mile-long tunnel,” you’d have grounds to dispute it.
INTO THE MOUNTAINS But because of railroads, and the mines that succored them, Colorado is a state where you can drive to almost anyplace. At one time it was a state you could take a train to almost anyplace, and even on a 587-mile narrow gauge grand circle tour that never touched the same rails twice. Because of railroads, it’s a state where the only major mountain valley a railroad did not follow, the Blue River between Dillon and Kremmling, is something of a trivia question that Coloradoans gloat to answer. Instead, we were gited superlatives, complexity, and drama. hink of almost any topographic yardstick that deines railroading as cool, and Colorado sets the record or has ambitions. Mountain passes? Real pass-
Timeline by Charles Albi, Colorado Railroad Museum; Colorado Central: R.H. Kindig collection; South Park: F.S. McKay
FEB. 26, 1878
DEC. 30, 1879
JULY 26, 1881
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe establishes a grade on Raton Pass ahead of the Denver & Rio Grande.
Denver & Rio Grande wins the “Royal Gorge War” with the Santa Fe.
Denver Union Depot opens.
DEC. 2, 1881 Denver, South Park & Pacific completes Alpine Tunnel — at 11,612 feet, the highest railroad in the world at the time.
JULY 8, 1882 Denver & Rio Grande completes the Silverton Branch.
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are the canyon walls so narrow that the track had to be hung from trusses turned sideways, spanning from wall to wall right across the churning river? he Mofat Road west of Denver had South Boulder, Fraser, Byers, Gore, Little Gore, Rock Creek, and Egeria. Just as the railroad twists from the grip of one, and you gather your breath while the lights of an isolated ranch house licker by, the track plunges into the darkness of another. Several of these canyons you can’t even get into except by railroad or parachute. Ride the coaches of the Durango & Silverton upbound in the morning, and you can stare 300 sheer feet down past the ends of the crossties to the green pools and foamy cascades of the Canyon of the Rio de las Animas Perdidas — the River of the Lost Souls. Famed western photographer William Henry Jackson stood at the bottom and looked up, photographing a Rio Grande passenger train high above; it’s a photograph actually more dramatic than the overwrought engravings in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper that illustrated for a gullible public showing train wrecks, bufalo stampedes, and snowbound trains that never quite happened that way. Jackson’s publisher sold 7 million prints a year in the late 1890s — there was a huge appetite for Colorado railroading. Lucius Beebe, never one to shy from excess when it came to describing Colorado’s railroads, gleefully reused both Jackson’s photographs and Leslie’s engravings, side by side, for extra shock and awe.
RISE AND RUN
es, with nasty grades? Passes with alarming place names that suggest fainting tourists and tracks chiseled into clifs, like Needle’s Eye Tunnel, Rile Sight Notch, Mears’ Puzzle, Tanglefoot Curve, the Big Slide, and Devil’s Slide? Other western states mostly get just a few big mountain passes; Colorado had them by the dozen: Rollins, Kenosha, Boreas, Fremont, Tennessee, Hagerman, Marshall, La Veta, Cumbres, Lizard Head,
Red Mountain, Baxter, Alpine Tunnel, Dallas Divide, Toponas Summit, just to name some of the signiicant ones. he highest place in North America on a railroad, by any criterion — main line, narrow gauge, cog? Colorado. Canyons of note? Or, in the common local spelling relecting Colorado Spanish and Mexican heritage, cañons? Consider the Royal Gorge: Where else in North America
Big grades? Stupidly steep grades other states might have had, but they were short. Colorado had a mainline railroad, the Moffat Road, with 15 miles of 4 percent against its eastward coal and crude-oil loads to windswept Corona, atop the Continental Divide, and 11 frightening miles of 4-percent descent. he Mofat needed three rotaries to keep Rollins Pass open through the winter: two shuttling back and forth, coupled to or just in advance of trains, chewing a trench that drited full in minutes, and a third inevitably in the backshop hastily being reassembled following some catastrophic plunge down a mountainside. Tennessee Pass had, until the 1990s, eight or more heavy trains a day climbing its 13 miles of 3 percent eastward. Coal trains needed 12 or
JULY 13, 1887
OCT. 22, 1890
DEC. 20, 1891
Colorado’s most celebrated canyon, the Royal Gorge, was also the site of one of the most audacious bridge projects — the famous hanging bridge over the Arkansas River. On April 16, 1959, diner-lounge Royal Gorge poses with its namesake train. Jim Scribbins
Colorado Midland opens from Colorado Springs to Buena Vista, first standard gauge in the Rockies.
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COLORADO RAILROADS
Manitou & Pikes Peak cog railway reaches 14,115-foot summit of the mountain.
Rio Grande Southern completed from Durango to Ridgway.
JUNE 23, 1904 First Denver, Northwestern & Pacific (Moffat Road) train, Denver to Mammoth.
During the late 20th century and until the 1990s when the route was closed, Tennessee Pass had eight or more heavy trains climbing its 13 miles of eastbound 3-percent grade on a daily basis. Running behind three Rio Grande GP40s and a GP30, this eastbound was working up the west side of the pass near Red Cliff, Colo., on April 30, 1967. Out of sight are two F7 helpers on the rear. Ed Fulcomer
more SD40T-2 “tunnel motors,” a coolingsystem improvement to the standard Electro-Motive Division SD40-2 that enabled the locomotive’s survival in the hot conines of the Mofat’s 49 numbered tunnels and the big 6.2-mile-long Mofat Tunnel. Only the Southern Paciic also needed tunnel motors. Colorado’s most ridiculous grade was the Uintah Railway’s 6 miles of 7.5 percent from Atchee to Baxter Pass, with 65-degree curves
around the loops it used to scale the Book Clifs. To put that into terms of comparison, on an HO scale model railroad, the loop would have a diameter of two feet — it’s cartoonish! (For what it’s worth, your writer led one-half of an engineering-operating team that took a new look at Baxter Pass two years ago, for its feasibility for a modern standard-gauge railroad with 2.2-percent ruling grades and 10-degree curves. he an-
swer was, of course, “no.”) Complexity? Leadville and Cripple Creek, barely beyond the tin cup and rude shack stage, attracted three railroads each. Silverton had four narrow gauge railroads all at once. Fremont Pass, where you can still ride today on the Leadville, Colorado & Southern, was crossed by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Denver South Park & Paciic, sometimes at a stone’s throw from
CM: W.H. Jackson; Pikes Peak: Ot to C. Perr y; C&S: TR A I NS : Tom Danneman
AUG. 7, 1904 Flash flood strikes Denver & Rio GrandeMissouri Pacific train 8 miles north of Pueblo at Porter Draw, resulting in 97 deaths.
OCTOBER 1910 Colorado & Southern ends service through Alpine Tunnel.
1914
AUG. 5, 1918
JUNE 3, 1921
Year of maximum rail mileage in state (5,933).
Colorado Midland ceases operation, the largest railroad abandonment in the U.S. up to that time.
Arkansas River flood severely damages all railroad facilities in Pueblo.
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Extreme railroading comes to an end: The last Denver, Northwestern & Pacific train to cross Rollins Pass, in February 1928, struggles over the 11,676-foot summit. No less than six locomotives were needed to move the oil train over the grade. LeClair Daily
each other. Amusingly, westward travel was in opposite directions, depending upon which railroad you were on. Grand Junction had a Union Station for 18 years for its three railroads. he competing interests of the D&RG and Colorado Midland built the joint Rio Grande Junction Railway from Rile to Grand Junction, where they connected with a third line, the Rio Grande Western, a completely separate company owning and operating the Utah lines, not combined with the Colorado lines until 1908.
HIGHEST CROSSING But without the gold and silver, none of this would have happened. No railroad would have challenged these mountains, not when it would be simple enough to parallel the UP through Wyoming or the Santa Fe through New Mexico. One might argue that a David Halliday Mofat might have attempted to put Denver onto a transcontinental line anyway. First, he wasn’t able to complete the Mofat Road — he didn’t have suicient personal wealth and investors couldn’t understand the business plan of a railroad that from a bridge-traic perspective repli-
FEB. 26, 1928 Moffat Tunnel opens, ending the struggle to move tonnage across Rollins Pass in winter.
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cated the UP except vastly more expensively. Second, we’d have to ind a diferent way to give Dave Mofat a fortune to splurge onto his eponymous railroad: He bootstrapped himself with sharp investments in Colorado gold and silver mines. It’s a contrarian thrill to think about the changes to North American railroading that would have occurred without a Colorado deining some of its extremes. North America’s highest railroad mountain crossings would have toppled downward from 11,676 feet just 50 miles west of Denver at Rollins Pass — the “temporary” Main Range crossing of the Denver, Northwestern & Paciic that operated for a quarter-century — to 7,834 feet at Raton Pass. he intricate network of narrow gauge that gited today’s seven spectacular tourist railroads in Colorado — well, that wouldn’t have happened. Arguments of which western railroad created the deinitive long-distance streamliner would have been simpliied without the California Zephyr of the Burlington, Rio Grande, and Western Paciic. What about U.S. culture and commerce? Would Hollywood have recast the Royal Gorge War, fought by the Rio Grande and
Santa Fe for the keyhole entry to the great silver strike at Leadville, in the dusty conines of Oregon’s Deschutes River? Or the desolation of Nevada’s Caliente Canyon? What would Dodge have named the Durango or Aspen, if not for the mining and railroads that birthed these towns? More seriously, had Colorado had no gold and silver, the railroad map west of Chicago might have been rather dramatically replotted. Consider the case of the western trunk lines — both the transcons as well as the grangers that wanted to be transcons when they grew up. Colorado with gold and silver, well, that was interesting. Now ... no railroad of transcontinental ambition, standing on the banks of the Mississippi or Missouri, biting its lip in its anxiety to bound across prairie, mountain, and desert to the Paciic shore, quite wanted to cross Colorado’s mountains, to be sure. But railroads did want to get close. hey lusted for the lucrative revenue for beef, lour, hardware, lumber, and coach tickets of Colorado’s mountain mining camps. his was instant revenue: just show up. None of that tedium of waiting for homesteads to be claimed, furrows to be plowed, or towns to be platted. hus, even while the irst transcontinental rails of the Union Paciic and Central Paciic were still not a sure thing to even meet, the promoters of what shortly become the Kansas Paciic Railway were lobbying Congress for the franchise to build to Denver, the base camp for Colorado’s irst serious gold bonanza at Central City. Despite its early start, the Kansas Paciic arrived second by a few months, ater the Denver Paciic, a Union Paciic ailiate, which reached Denver southward from Cheyenne in 1870. On their heels across the plains were the Burlington, Rock Island, and Missouri Paciic, each with its own aspiration to challenge the Union Paciic hegemon for its control of the mining traic, while the Santa Fe approached from the south. Unsurprisingly, the trunk lines were not terribly interested in building themselves the necessary rail lines into the mountains that would be needed to bring the gold and silver strikes into industrial production. hat would be expensive and who knew whether each strike would pan out. Two independent railroads arose. he irst, the Colorado Central, was not radical in concept: simply jam a
MAY 26, 1934
JUNE 16, 1934
FEB. 9, 1936
Burlington Zephyr 9900 runs nonstop from Denver to the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago.
Dotsero Cutoff opens with special trains, including Burlington Zephyr 9900, creating a direct main line west from Denver.
First Denver & Salt Lake ski train (then called snow train), runs from Denver to Hot Sulphur Springs.
COLORADO RAILROADS
APRIL 10, 1937 Last passenger train from Leadville to Denver on the former Denver, South Park & Pacific.
The eastbound California Zephyr passes the monument to the dome car at the spot where the idea for such a passenger car was conceived. Such a magnificent train, indeed, such an incredible car, might not have been possible without Colorado. Everet t L. DeGolyer
short line up to the mining camps on Clear Creek immediately west of Denver, and let the lucre roll in. he second, however, would one by one slay all the pretenders to the much vaster riches of Leadville, Aspen, the Gunnison, and the San Juans: the Denver & Rio Grande. Both newcomers chose narrow gauge, 3 feet between the rails, because it made their grading, track materials, and rolling stock much less expensive, astute de-
cisions given the heavy costs to construct in the mountains. As the Rio Grande reached Leadville and furiously branched into the San Juan Mountains of the southwestern Colorado, and across Marshall Pass into the Gunnison River Valley, the UP had second thoughts about leaving the dirty work of mountain railroading to others, and backed the Denver, South Park & Paciic, also narrow gauge, that wormed its own sketchy
Jr.
wonder of a railroad into the mountain vastness to compete with the D&RG. his was all quite ambitious, and not entirely rational. If one was to compare the actual long-term traic potential of Colorado’s mountains, to almost anywhere else, it was small. For example, consider the potential of year-in, year-out grain and merchandise on the Great Plains east of the 100th meridian, where conventional European-style farming
Zephyr, Louis A. Marre collection; Rio Grande emblem, TR A I NS : Tom Danneman
MARCH 1938
AUG. 25, 1943
Rocky Mountain Railroad Club established.
Colorado & Southern’s last narrow gauge train from Climax to Leadville, ending all narrow gauge service on the former Denver, South Park & Pacific.
APRIL 11, 1947
MARCH 21, 1949
MAY 31, 1949
Denver & Salt Lake merged into Denver & Rio Grande Western.
Inaugural trip of California Zephyr through the Rockies.
D&RGW abandons Sapinero-Cedar Creek on Marshall Pass main line, breaking the narrow gauge circle. www.TrainsMag.com
13
A Burlington Route train treads some of the most famous tracks outside of the mountains in Colorado: street running in Fort Collins. Behind the locomotive are 26 cars of sugar beets for Loveland, Colo. Burlington was one of several Class I railroads in the state. Jim Ehernberger
was fairly foolproof. hat traic wasn’t going to dry up, ever. Or, consider the traic potential of the densely populated Oicial Territory bounded by New York, Chicago, and the north bank of the Ohio. To put a bright face on Colorado’s mountain potential, about the best you could say is at least you might not have to compete with a bunch of other railroads. As illustration, consider the Minneapolis
& St. Louis Railroad Co. of 1909 — a property probably not, I think, on the top of anyone’s list of potentially most lucrative railroads of all time. Together with its subsidiaries Des Moines & Fort Dodge and Minnesota, Dakota & Paciic, it reported 999 route-miles operated and revenue of $4.2 million to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1909. Compare the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Co. (the railroad,
JUNE 3, 1950
JAN. 31, 1951
JUNE 30, 1951
Denver Tramway discontinues its last city streetcar line.
Final run of Denver & Rio Grande Western’s San Juan, the last daily narrow gauge passenger train in the nation.
Fort Collins Municipal Railway abandoned, the last street railway line in Colorado and the last in North America to operate Birney cars.
14
COLORADO RAILROADS
DEC. 27, 1951 Rio Grande Southern operates its final train.
which, we should not forget, is the source of most of the superlatives and spectacle to which this entire issue is devoted). Together with its subsidiaries Rio Grande Junction (50 percent owned), Rio Grande Southern, and Calumet Fuel Co., it reported 2,045 route-miles, almost exactly twice that of the M&StL. he Rio Grande banked $13.4 million in revenue that iscal year, half again as much per mile as the ostensibly dull M&StL.
OCT. 28, 1956 First trip of Burlington’s new Denver Zephyr, the last long-distance train in the U.S. to receive all-new equipment until the Amtrak era.
Santa Fe 2-10-2 No. 1680 assists the 15 passenger cars and three diesels pulling train No. 19, the Chief, at Wootton, Colo., on the climb up Raton Pass on June 17, 1950. Santa Fe and Rio Grande fought for control of this part of the Centennial State. R.H. Kindig
It hardly seems worth all the trouble of avalanches, helper engines, and thin air. So realized Charles Francis Adams Jr., president of the Union Paciic from 1884 to 1890, who in 1887 ruefully described to the Paciic Railroad Commission his experiment in gold-and-silver railroading, the Denver, South Park & Paciic. “he chief source of revenue of the road was in carrying men and material into Colorado to dig holes in the ground called mines, and until it was discovered that there was nothing in those mines, the business was immense. hat was the famous mining boom of Colorado — for it was famous at the time — when everyone was crazy. While the craze lasted, the railroad did a magniicent business. When the mining craze broke down,
and these mines and villages were deserted — and they stand there deserted today — of course the business let the road.”
RIO GRANDE’S SURVIVAL Perhaps the Rio Grande survived only because, as a railroad property, it didn’t have other options. As mining turned ickle, if you were a UP, Santa Fe, Rock Island, or Burlington, there were better amusements. If you were a Rio Grande of the early 1900s, you just cut back on maintenance. It’s not hard to conclude that Colorado’s mountains would have remained unblemished by bankrupt railroads had there been no gold or silver. But consider the bigger picture of the North American railroad map. What might have happened had there
been no gold and silver to craze miners, railroaders, and their enablers, the investor lusting for a tide liting only his boat? he railroad map, not just within Colorado, could have been quite diferent. It’s hard to imagine so many western trunk lines drawn across the plains to the gateway cities of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, without the enticement of glittering bullion. Would the Burlington — liberated from the urge to splatter its cash onto the construction, acquisition, and expansion of subsidiary Colorado & Southern, a “little Rio Grande,” that it paralleled along the Front Range, and incorporated impecunious South Park, late of embarrassing Mr. Adams’ ledgers — have been contented to stop once its branch lines ran out of farmers beyond RGS, E.J. Haley; Rio Grande, R.H. Kindig
DEC. 26, 1956 Final use of Denver & Rio Grande Western standard gauge steam locomotives.
JULY 1959
OCT. 11, 1962
JULY 16, 1970
Colorado Railroad Museum opens.
Colorado & Southern No. 641 runs LeadvilleClimax, the last standard gauge steam in regular service on a Class I railroad.
Colorado and New Mexico acquire joint ownership of D&RGW’s Antonito-to-Chama track, which becomes Cumbres & Toltec.
MARCH 25, 1981 Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad purchases D&RGW’s Silverton Branch. www.TrainsMag.com
15
LIFE WITHOUT COLORADO?
the 100th meridian in Kansas and Nebraska? Would it have merely disgorged its granger revenues as dividends? Or would it instead have spent its cash on its of-and-on ambition to meet the Central Paciic at Ogden? What about the Rock Island? If subtracted of one of its myriad beguiling pursuits, would it have not built everyplace but not really anyplace, and focused? Or would the Missouri Paciic — a latecomer to Colorado, with an unfashionably hilly route between the Santa Fe and Kansas Paciic built almost in vain to Pueblo — have ever bothered? Much less purchased the Rio Grande in an efort to secure a share of transcontinental traic? Much less spent itself into ruin in the 1920s in the quixotic quest to transform the awful Rio Grande into a real railroad? What would the 1930s have looked like with a strong, iscally sound MP, anyway? Probably scary, if one happened to be one of its neighbors hoping to survive the Great Depression intact and independent. It’s hard to imagine, absent gold and silver, that any of these railroads would have drawn Colorado onto their map. he grangers would have bent around Colorado on their way west to bigger, brighter prizes, if they went that far west at all. Today, we would have had a few secondary lines into
Denver from north and east. We would have something running north-south along the Front Range — but we would never have had six distinct trunk lines entering from the east, nor two competing lines exiting to north and south, and certainly not two parallel railroads all the way from Cheyenne to Trinidad, nor three between Denver and Colorado Springs. here probably wouldn’t be three main lines exiting to the south. Raton Pass, where the Santa Fe humps over the Black Mesa, a spill of lava that juts 90 miles eastward into the northwest corner of Oklahoma — that would be there, because that line was never about Colorado at all, only about reaching the Paciic by the most expedient means possible. Similarly, the Santa Fe line from Las Animas to Amarillo, Texas, that would likely be there; its rationale was agricultural. he Colorado & Southern line, further east over Black Mesa, on a narrow-gauge-ish alignment, connecting Colorado to the Fort Worth & Denver into Texas — probably not. Which poses the question, how would all that coal moved on Burlington Northern to Texas from the Powder River Basin beginning in the 1970s? Perhaps it all would have rolled through Kansas City, or down the Rock Island into Fort Worth from the north.
What about west of Colorado? Without a Rio Grande ishing its 3-foot railroad into every crevasse, a South Park egging it on, would there have been a Rio Grande crossing the Utah state line? Almost certainly not. here would be a branch line of consequence over Soldier Summit from Provo to the Book Clif Coal Field in Helper (a wonderful town name our railroad map could have lost), but would this line have continued across the barren Green River Desert to Grand Junction? Unlikely. Without the standard-gauge Colorado Midland invading the Rio Grande’s mountain territory, would the Rio Grande have ever backed into the business of being a transcontinental? Instead of just a big collection of ne’erdo-well branch lines in Colorado and Utah that happened to connect in the middle? Probably not. Similarly, the Yampa Coal Field of Northwestern Colorado likely would only have been developed for minemouth power plants in the 1960s. Perhaps the UP, which thought about building a branch line south from the Green River/ Rock Springs vicinity, might have done so. he biggest missing links beyond Colorado’s borders, though, might have been both the Western Paciic and the Los Angeles & Salt Lake. Both were post-1900 ambitions that imposed modern operating criteria onto diicult and bleak country, as if lack of traic could be overcome if your operating ratio was low enough. Had there been no gold and silver, and no Rio Grande, and no last link for a complete, one-owner transcontinental, would there have been a Western Paciic? Or would another grandee of George Gould’s grandiosity also think it was a great idea to build the highest-operating-cost coast-to-coast transcontinental imaginable? hat personality description, perhaps not coincidentally, its the LA&SL’s William A. Clark quite nicely, but would he have decided to stick his two pins in the map, connecting his line’s namesake rail hubs, if Salt Lake City was but a hub for some mining and farming branches of the Union Paciic? Ironically, it was gold and silver that laid the foundation for the Rio Grande to attain its greatest reward, coal, mined in Colorado and Utah, and delivered to steel mills and power plants. It was coal that brought the
APRIL 24, 1983
AUG. 1, 1984
JUNE 2, 1985
OCT. 13, 1988
OCT. 7, 1994
Final run of the Rio Grande Zephyr, the last privately operated passenger train in the United States.
First train over rebuilt Georgetown Loop high bridge, 100 years after the opening of the original loop bridge.
Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society begins service with original car 21 over first portion of rebuilt line.
Denver & Rio Grande Western becomes part of Southern Pacific.
Denver’s Regional Transportation District begins service on its first light-rail line, the 5.3-mile Central Corridor.
The Rio Grande, symbol of so much of Colorado railroading, had nowhere else to go for traffic. After laying tracks in search of gold and silver, it was coal that made the road. A westbound appropriately heads up Coal Creek Canyon in 1972. Ron Burkhard
16
COLORADO RAILROADS
“Is there another state that ever captured as much attention?” asks the author. Scenes like this eastbound BNSF Railway train popping out of Moffat Tunnel only underscore the incredible wonder of Colorado railroads and make you wish for more. Frank Orona
Rio Grande into the late 20th century intact, and coal that today provides the bulk of the traic in the mountains west of Denver. But the chain of events that made coal king on the Rio Grande was preposterously unlikely. Gold and silver created the franchise and connected it in the middle in Utah. he Midland’s competition forced standardgauging. Gould’s ego entangled the Rio Grande with the MoPac. he MoPac’s money rebuilt the cheap narrow gauge alignment into something that actually lived up to the name “main line.” he Interstate Commerce Commission’s regulation made rates identical regardless of operating cost, and protected the high-cost Rio Grande in the name of
preserving competition. Mofat’s mining money built the outlet for Colorado coal to markets stretching as far as the Ohio River Valley and Gulf of Mexico. he Rio Grande was a coal road by accident. So there we have it. Colorado is not just another western rectangle state, which happens to have some railroads. Punch this particular rectangular hole out of the railroad map and history doesn’t just bend around it. Nor does the fascination that falls onto the glories of Colorado’s mountain railroads just plop onto some other state without loss of emphasis. Of course, there were other enormous timber trestles in other states. here were
other loops teetering on mountainsides. here were other states with locomotives exhausting into crisp azure sky high in mountain passes, shivering in anticipation of winter blizzards. here were other silver camps in other states where trains ran past saloon doors spilling laughter and music into the night. But is there another state that ever captured so much attention as Colorado? No, there wasn’t, which is unfortunate, because it would have been awesome to have two Colorados. Colorado native MARK W. HEMPHILL edited Trains between 2000 and 2004. He is a notable railroad consultant today. Rio Grande, TR A I NS : Tom Danneman; SP, William P. Diven
SEPT. 11, 1996 Union Pacific acquires Southern Pacific, with BNSF given trackage rights over former D&RGW west of Denver.
AUG. 23, 1997 Union Pacific discontinues Tennessee Pass line from Parkdale to Gypsum.
NOVEMBER 2004 Voters approve sales tax for construction of 122 miles of light rail, the largest rail-transit project in the nation.
JULY 26, 2014 After a three-year refurbishing, Denver Union Station reopens as a multimodal transit/Amtrak/hotel/ restaurant facility.
APRIL 22, 2016 RTD commuter trains connect Union Station and airport, making the station a gateway to the city once more. www.TrainsMag.com
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19
With light snow falling, Union Station provides a beacon of warmth for passengers arriving aboard Amtrak’s eastbound California Zephyr, train No. 6, on Jan. 3, 2015. Br yan Bechtold
DENVER UNION STATION
Reconceived and reborn, the Mile-High City’s new transit hub is a sight to behold by Karl Zimmermann
enver Union Station’s predecessor established the city as the transportation hub of the West and the primary gateway to the Rocky Mountains. Opened on June 1, 1881, where 17th Street dead-ends into Wynkoop Street, Denver Union Depot was 504 feet long and 65 feet wide, the largest structure in the West. Within a decade, 100 trains were coming and going on its tracks, standard and 3 foot gauge, headed east across the plains, north to Cheyenne, south toward Pueblo, and from there, into mountains rich in silver and gold, or directly into those mountains. he imposing Italian Romanesque building, designed by William E. Taylor, a Kansas City-based architect, was built largely of stone, but the 180-foot-tall, 32-squarefoot-wide clock tower with double-decked spire and viewing platform that rose over the building’s midsection was wood. Fire and increased passenger volume would lead to two signiicant modiications, the last in 1914, when the current grand, Beaux Artsstyle center section was built, creating a structure that, on the outside, looked then almost exactly as it does today. he restored Denver Union Station oicially opened on July 26, 2014, a century ater the opening of that station, which now stands as a peerless example of what can be accomplished through enlightened preservation and creative repurposing. In it are the Crawford Hotel — named for preservationist Dana Crawford, a partner in
Union Station Alliance, the group that planned, developed, and now manages Union Station — shops, and a wide variety of restaurants. Its Great Hall was dubbed “Denver’s living room” by the planners. It is open 24 hours a day, invites local residents to come and relax, mingle, play table shuleboard, or, using the free Wi-Fi, work at long tables provided with outlets. Outside, the California Zephyr makes its twicedaily call under a curving, white-fabric canopy draped over irregular white-steel frames, the work of Roger Dufy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Beginning on April 22, 2016, the Zephyr will rub shoulders with frequent commuter trains from Denver International Airport, and before the end of 2016, trains from two additional commuter lines will funnel in as well. he Great Hall is recognizably the old waiting room, but that canopy over the station’s eight tracks is very diferent from the platforms and umbrella sheds it replaced. Futuristic and airy, it’s nothing like the substantial Beaux Arts and Italian Romanesque styles of the 1914 center section and 1881 wings. Appropriately, it relects the favored architectural style of the day, just as they did. he canopy is lit from within at night, an elegantly luminous efect. Its oval central opening allows views of the station and nearby mountains. he tracks all stub-end in the station, but it’s been a long time since any trains let to the south anyway. Amtrak’s return to Union Station on Feb. 28, 2014, ater a three-year exile to a bare-bones facility a few blocks away, at 21st and Wewatta streets, heralded the opening of the Crawford, shops, and restaurants. he complet-
Union Station is a popular year-round destination for travelers and residents alike. The Terminal Bar is in the former ticket-office space, facing Wynkoop Street. Br yan Bechtold
22
COLORADO RAILROADS
ed package makes the temporary inconvenience a worthwhile sacriice. he reborn Union Station had been in the works since 2001, when the Regional Transportation District for Denver and Boulder, Colo., purchased the station and adjacent rail yards from the Denver Union Terminal Railway Corp. and stabilized the station. his agreement was jointly funded by RTD, the city and county of Denver, the Colorado Department of Transportation, and the Denver Regional Council of Governments — the “partner agencies.” In 2002, the Denver Union Station Project Team was developed to prepare an environmental impact statement and to create a master plan, which would serve as the blueprint for preserving and redeveloping the station and nearly 20 acres of surrounding land. In September 2009, Denver’s city council formed the Denver Union Station Project Authority to take responsibility for inancing, acquiring, owning, equipping, designing, constructing, renovating, operating, and maintaining the restoration project. he authority chose the Union Station Neighborhood Co. as master developer for this $800 million project from among 11 applicants. he fruits of all this planning are visible today. here is, however, one revered detail of two iterations of Union Station that has not been recreated and won’t be: the “Welcome,” or “Mizpah Arch,” which stood on Wynkoop Street in front of the station’s central section. Workers built it using 70 tons of steel making the station 65-feet-tall, 85-feet wide and big enough to put 2,194 lightbulbs to good use. When Denver’s then-Mayor Robert Speer dedicated the arch in 1906, it was just the Welcome Arch, but in 1908 on the side facing Wynkoop, away from the station, the word “Welcome” was changed to “Mizpah,” a Hebrew word expressing an emotional bond between separated people. Speer predicted that the arch would stand “for ages as an expression of love, good wishes, and kind feelings of our citizens for the stranger who enters our gates,” but it was torn down in December 1931 as a traic hazard. A planned installation on the station’s north plaza will echo and interpret the original arch, but on a smaller scale. THE BEGINNINGS, AND DECLINE Denver had train stations before the Union Depot of 1881. he city’s irst railroad was the Denver Paciic Railway, which ran north to Cheyenne, Wyo., and would later become part of the Union Paciic. By 1879 there were ive stations, with the Colorado Central; Denver Paciic; Kansas Paciic; Denver & Rio Grande; and Denver, South Park & Paciic each having its own. here’s no historical certainty about who irst pro-
This view of Denver Union Depot, after the 1894 fire, shows dual gauge track in place. L.C. McClure
posed a union station late that year, but Union Paciic (which would consolidate with Denver Paciic and Kansas Paciic in January 1880) headed by Jay Gould generally gets the nod. he Union Depot and Railroad Co. of Colorado formed in November 1879 and began quietly buying up the four blocks between 16th and 18th streets and Wynkoop and Delgany streets. By June 1, 1881, when the depot oicially opened with 28 trains arriving and departing, it had been in partial use for a month. Originally, there were just three tracks: one 3-foot gauge for Rio Grande, two dual gauge used by standard-gauge UP, narrow gauge DSP&P, and dual-gauge Colorado Central. Almost immediately, the Rio Grande added a third rail to Pueblo, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe entered as a tenant, paying Rio Grande for trackage rights. he Denver & New Orleans and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, came in as tenants about the same time. Soon there were six tracks and, by 1890, 12. he depot grew so busy that in 1892 188-foot,
Looking southeast at the track side of Union Station across the site of the former Colorado & Southern freight yard on Aug. 11, 1996. Steve Pat terson
single-story extensions (later removed) were added to accommodate mail, express, and baggage. Rio Grande, UP, Colorado Central, and DSP&P had oices in the wings, though in time all the railroads would move out, leaving those spaces for functions directly relating to the depot. he narrow gauge presence, seemingly
incongruous for such a grand station, gave extra quirky interest to Denver Union Depot. he Rio Grande narrow gauge exited when the railroad became standard-gauge-only as far as Salida in 1890. he DSP&P, part of Colorado & Southern ater 1899, survived until April 1937, when it ended the last narrow gauge www.TrainsMag.com
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Amtrak passengers wait for the westbound California Zephyr at Union Station in August 2010, prior to the facility’s 2014 grand reopening. William P. Diven
Amtrak train No. 5, the combined westbound Denver Zephyr and San Francisco Zephyr, arrives at Denver Union Station in December 1972 with Burlington and UP power. Mel Patrick
passenger service to Leadville. Union Depot was a great step forward for Denver railroading and thrived until March 18, 1894, when an electrical ire, started in the women’s restroom, gutted the center section and south wing of the depot. he wooden clock tower, which had towered 200 feet above street level, came tumbling down, destroyed. Reconstruction began immediately. Architects Van Brunt & Howe, from Kansas City like Taylor, built within the surviving stone walls, retaining for the most part the door and window openings and design articulation. he biggest changes were the grand Romanesque Revival clock tower, 40 feet taller than the original, with corner turrets and a clock face 14 feet in diameter, and a latter roof line all around. he catalyst for the next evolution, of 24
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Denver Union Depot into Denver Union Station, was not a calamity but too much of a good thing: too many passengers for the essentially 30-plus-year-old station to properly accommodate. In August 1912, the original Union Depot partnership was dissolved and the Santa Fe, Burlington, Rock Island, Colorado & Southern, Rio Grande, and Union Paciic — with all railroads buying in, no more tenancies — created Denver Union Terminal Railway Co. to make massive improvements to the station. his time local architects, Aaron M. Gove and homas F. Walsh, were hired. Using a gray Colorado granite and terra-cotta detailing, the Gove & Walsh irm created a monumental, all-new Beaux Arts center section with a spacious waiting room lanked by the various appurtenances needed by any great train station of the time: ticket oice, bag-
gage room, barber shop, parcel check, men’s smoking room, women’s retiring room, newsstand, lunch room with counter service, and a more formal dining room. hen and now, passengers entering from Wynkoop passed under a cast-ironand-glass canopy. On the other side of the station, the railroad side, there were major changes. Tracks were raised 5 feet to allow an underground pedestrian passageway, opened June 1916, to all tracks. Slightly raised platforms were added as well as umbrella sheds to protect passengers from the elements. Now the station was ready for its inest hour. Of course, Denver Union Station’s rebirth couldn’t have happened without some preconditions, and one of them was the diminishing of its original purpose: hosting passenger trains. hough the station was still buzzing in 1958, that proved a milestone year which, in retrospect, could be seen as the beginning of the end. For the irst time, traic through Denver’s now closed Stapleton International Airport exceeded that through Union Station. In 1958, name trains serving Union Station included Burlington’s California Zephyr, Denver Zephyr, Coloradoan, and subsidiary Colorado & Southern’s Texas Zephyr. he Burlington also delivered the Missouri Paciic’s Colorado Eagle. Union Paciic trains were the City of Denver, City of St. Louis, and Portland Rose. he Denver & Rio Grande Western ran the California Zephyr west out of Denver and also the Royal Gorge, the Prospector, the Yampa Valley, and the Mountaineer. Of the Rock Island came the Rocky Mountain Rocket. Santa Fe was the modest contributor to this list, operating only unnamed services connecting to its main line in La Junta. By April 30, 1971, the eve of Amtrak, all that remained of those trains were remnants of the Portland Rose and City of Denver, the Santa Fe’s La Junta connection, the Denver Zephyr, and the “California service” remnant of the California Zephyr.
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he following day there were just a revived, rerouted California Zephyr, now pointed north toward Cheyenne and the UP main, and the brand-new Rio Grande Zephyr to Salt Lake City, which Rio Grande operated in lieu of joining Amtrak. he Ski Train to Winter Park — initially run by the Rio Grande, which in 1988 sold it to Philip Anschutz’s Ansco Investment Co. — was a seasonal addition from 1940 until 2009. RECONCEPTION AND REBIRTH A prerequisite to Union Station’s resurrection was the revival of LoDo — “Lower Downtown” — where the station is located, a process that began with the redevelopment, irst conceived in 1965, of “Larimer Square,” on the 1400 block of Larimer Street, Denver’s original main street. “It was a block of wonderful Victorian
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buildings, waiting to be demolished,” according to Dana Crawford, the catalyst for that efort, which lew in the face of the mid-1960s urban-renewal mantra of “tear it down.” Not really a square (the name was inspired by San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, generally considered the country’s irst major adaptive-reuse success), it was and is a mix of restaurants, shops, galleries, and oices. he Oxford Hotel, right in Union Station’s front yard, less than a block down 17th Street, was the next important step for LoDo. (It is now managed jointly with the Crawford Hotel.) his circa 1891 Victorian was thoroughly renovated using photographs and original architectural drawings and reopened in 1983. Its Cruise Room bar, which dates from 1933, is an Art Deco classic. Next came a series of com-
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mercial lots turned condos: Acme, Flour Mill, Ajax, others — all, like the Oxford, Crawford-involved projects. “Popular opinion was that no one would want to live downtown,” Crawford says, “let alone in an old warehouse. I didn’t buy into that.” As it turned out, she was right. In 1988, John Hickenlooper, current governor of Colorado, and three partners opened Wynkoop Brewing Co., Denver’s irst crat brewery, virtually across the street from Union Station. In 1995, the Colorado Rockies baseball franchise began to play in Coors Field, just a few blocks away. Yet Union Station stood only lightly used, deteriorating, with no clear mission. he waiting room, illed with many more wooden benches, oddly lit from above, than would possibly be needed, was a sad place. he only food service was at a lunch www.TrainsMag.com
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In the station’s west wing, highly rated Stoic & Genuine — its name comes from the chefs’ nicknames — serves fresh seafood flown in daily. Two photos, Karl Zimmermann
counter with stools. “here were many years when Union Station was on the chopping block,” Crawford says. “Until Mayor Wellington Webb, whose father was a redcap, said that Union Station must be saved.” It was during his 12year watch that RTD and the Union Station Partners began the process that led to what we all can enjoy today. “I’m by nature a preservationist, so that was not a diicult call,” Webb says. “For those of us in the West, preservation is especially important, since we have so little history. For the Union Station project we contributed $10 million of city funds into the pot. From that, I knew two things would happen. We’d get a seat at the table and a role in the planning. “For me, Union Station has a very personal signiicance,” he says, “since I irst came to Denver from Chicago as a boy aboard Union Paciic’s City of Denver. I remember coming through the tunnel from the tracks and into the waiting room to meet my grandmother.”
UNION STATION TODAY Walk into the Great Hall from trackside today and be amazed. It’s soaring and monumental, with a 65-foot, barrel-vaulted ceiling. Immaculately restored details abound: 2,300 plaster columbines (the state lower) that line the soaring, two-story arches; two dozen brass sconces; and three magniicent chandeliers. Creating “Denver’s living room” was the goal of the Union Station Alliance for the space, a term that Crawford calls “a pithy expression to make people see it as part of their lives, a place to gather and be comfortable.” Scattered across the marble loor are a plethora of seating possibilities in various groupings: sofas, love seats, and easy chairs around cofee tables, straight-backed chairs facing each other over high tables, picnic tables for quafs and edibles. “he vision for Union Station goes back more than 20 years,” says Walter Isenberg, founder, president, and CEO of Denverbased Sage Development. “In 1990 we became partners with Dana Crawford’s Urban
Neighborhoods in the Oxford Hotel restoration. Not long aterward Dana said, ‘Hey, let’s go over to Union Station,’ which at the time was a pretty depressing place,” Isenberg says. “‘his could make a really good hotel,’ we thought.” Certainly the Great Hall is a gathering place, but it’s much more as well. It’s the lobby for the Crawford Hotel, which ills most of the space in the station’s north and south wings above the ground loor. It’s a waiting room for Amtrak’s California Zephyr, and, soon, thousands of commuter rail passengers will pass through every day. By 2030 it’s projected to serve 200,000 passengers a day on 500 trains, and that doesn’t count the RTD bus passengers already arriving at the complex’s 22 underground platforms. In addition, the lost and much lamented weekend Ski Train is showing signs of life, with Winter Park pointing out that it’s the only railaccessible ski area in the country. In the Great Hall, look toward the Wynkoop Street end, away from the tracks, and you’ll see the original ticket windows, once obscured by plywood, now again active but selling beer as the Terminal Bar, not tickets. It pours 30 diferent crat beers, all on tap, all Colorado products. Above the bar is he Cooper Lounge, an elegant cocktail spot: beer below, martinis above. Last November the lounge made Playboy Magazine’s 2015 Best Bars in America list, placing irst in the train station category. Why Cooper? Job Adams Cooper was governor of Colorado in 1894 when the state capitol was built. hough buildings now block the view, the capitol’s dome was once visible through the 28-foot-tall arched, cast-iron windows that lood the lounge with light and ofer city views to complement the views in the other direction of the Great Hall. “I was reticent at irst about having the hotel named for me,” Crawford says, “and the Cooper name came up as an alternative. hen my family and I relented, and Cooper was kept as the name for the lounge. “We didn’t want to end up with a lot of chains you could ind anywhere,” Craw-
Underground and perpendicular to the train platforms is the 22-gate bus concourse, serving local and regional routes. More than two city blocks long, it connects Union Station’s Great Hall with the facility’s light rail station. Lef t and right, Br yan Bechtold; center, TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt
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The station’s Wynkoop Street façade shows virtually no change from its appearance in 1914 when the Beaux-Arts center section opened.
ford continues. Appropriate for a building clad in Colorado granite, the focus within is strictly local, and all tenants have regional roots. he Kitchen Next Door Community Pub had its start in Boulder. Stoic & Genuine, a ish house, lies in fresh seafood daily from New England, but the chefs started with three Larimer Square restaurants. “Snooze, an A.M. Eatery,” irst opened nearby in Denver’s Ballpark neighborhood. Mercantile Dining & Provision follows in the footsteps of Fruition, a noted Denver restaurant. At Pigtrain Cofee Co., named ater trailer-on-latcar trains, you’re invited to “engineer your java,” brewed from locally roasted beans. Milkbox Ice Creamery, in the station’s former barbershop, serves 16 lavors from Denver’s acclaimed Little Man Ice Cream. he Cooper Lounge pours Leopold Bros. Small Batch Gin and other spirits, all distilled in Denver. he retail establishments — Bloom, a lorist and more, the 5 Green Boxes boutique, and the Tattered Cover Book Store, among the country’s inest and most revered “indies” — are local too. he Crawford Hotel’s reception desk is in the Great Hall. Guest rooms come in three distinct lavors: Classic, Lot, and Pullman. he Classic rooms, with the tall ceilings and expansive windows of the ofices they once were, are decorated with a Victorian touch, relecting the era in which the station’s two wings were built. In Union Station’s former attic, the Lot rooms —
multilevel, funky, creative, with exposed timbers and vaulted ceilings — pay homage to Dana Crawford’s projects converting warehouses to condominiums. he Pullman rooms overlook the tracks and have woodwork with Art Deco touches while also channeling the feeling of traveling aboard a Pullman car in the pre-streamlined era. Decoration includes framed Pullman Co. advertisements. Like the Lot rooms, the Pullman rooms were constructed in found space, taking advantage of the wings’ 22-foot-high ceilings. “Since we had a 99-year lease, we needed to plan for a century of inancial stability,” Crawford says. “So we needed enough guest rooms. Architect Jim Johnson thought of adding a half level over the kitchens of two restaurants. hen we came up with the idea of the Pullman-style rooms. he volume of the building was eiciently and imaginatively used to produce 112 rooms in all.” Some things were rediscovered in the renovation, lost artifacts brought to light once more and displayed. Objects found inside the waiting room benches when they were disassembled — coins, tokens, and claim checks — are framed and displayed in the south wing Pullman hallway. Scroll signs, hand-painted on cloth with railroad initials and train names and destinations, once directed passengers to the right platform from the underground passageway. hey now hang in the south elevator lobby.
A priceless artifact that was lost, found, and reacquired is the colorful neon sign with steam locomotive and caboose that once led travelers to the Union Station Restaurant: Continental Room and Caboose Lounge. he piece was sold to a casino in Black Hawk, Colo., then brought back to Denver and restored to become the centerpiece of he Kitchen Next Door, hanging over the bar. At Denver Union Station, innovation is as enchanting as restoration, and a consciousness of community runs through it. On the south plaza, outside he Kitchen Next Door, a new, elaborate water feature spouts irresistibly to frolicking children. he restaurant ofers a stack of towels outside its door, next to a bin with this sign: “When you’re all dry, bring your towel back here and drop it in the basket. hanks!” “I’m just pleased that we were part of Union Station’s preservation,” Webb says. “If you don’t save your history, you don’t have one to remember. And for me there’s nothing more special than getting on a train in Denver Union Station and going from there through the Rockies.” Happily, the station’s most iconic signage, a signiicant part of its history, was not lost. hat’s the huge orange neon invitation, aixed in 1952 to the station’s roof on both track and Wynkoop sides, reading “Union Station, Travel by Train.” It glows as brightly as ever and is likely to for a long time to come. www.TrainsMag.com
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SKY HIGH in Leadville North America’s highest standard gauge line endures as a tourist hauler by Brian Schmidt
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isitors to Leadville, Colo., elevation 10,200 feet, feel like they can almost touch the sky. And with the family-run Leadville Colorado & Southern, they can get even higher. he 12.5-mile railroad makes its living hauling tourists between the Leadville depot and French Gulch, just a few miles shy of Climax. Ken and Stephanie Olsen purchased the line from Burlington Northern in 1987 for just $10 and formed their own railroad. he pair knew they wanted to do something to help the community, which was ailing from the 1986 closure of the mine that was the line’s primary customer. he irst excursion trains ran in May 1988, with help from former BN employees, and the railroad has been an integral part of the Leadville community ever since. Climax
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he Olsens have kept the railroad a family business. Son Derek is the roadmaster, operations manager, and head engineer; daughter Kirstin Ayers is director of sales and marketing; and son-in-law Steven Ayers is the track foreman and company historian. he railroad operates two ex-BN GP9s. Also on the roster are four cabooses, six passenger cars built from latcars, and a concession car converted from a boxcar. Built as part of the famed Denver, South Park & Paciic narrow gauge, the line was later under control of Colorado & Southern; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; and BN as an isolated standard gauge branch. Maintaining the railroad is a challenge, Steven Ayers says. he railroad’s excursion trains encounter 71 curves in the regular 9.5-mile excursion route, and most of the line is on a 2-percent grade. Compounding that, he says, is a short window for maintenance — just ive months of “good weather” due to the elevation. But that short window in the summer and fall is also what puts passengers in the railroad’s seats between May and October each year for the 2½-hour round trip. “Getting away and into the wilderness makes this an easy way to enjoy the outdoors,” Ayers says. “Fall at 10,000 feet is spectacular. We have beautiful fall trips with aspen tree tunnels along the way. “From the wildlower tours in July to the irst and last snows of the season, the railroad gives any adventurer a reason to relax and enjoy life.”
Above: The excursion train clings to the mountainside northeast of its namesake city while state Route 91 weaves through the canyon below. Former BN GP9 No. 1714 is in charge on this day. Leadville Colorado & Southern Far left: Passengers enjoy the ride back to Leadville in June 2015 while a few patches of snow hang on in the shadows. Left: Before the railroad’s return in 1988, the former Colorado & Southern depot in Leadville, built in 1893, saw its last passenger train in April 1937. Now it houses railroad offices, ticket sales, and a gift shop. Two photos, TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt www.TrainsMag.com
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main line
Building a railroad west from Denver was a challenge, but the spectacular results live on Story and photos by Mike Danneman
The paint on the Union Pacific AC4400CWs matches the color of aspens in autumn as an eastbound coal train exits Moffat Tunnel at East Portal, Colo., on Sept. 24, 2001.
Passengers examine 30-foot snowdrifts at Corona on the Moffat Road’s Rollins Pass line. Two photos, L.C. McClure, TR A I NS collection
ook west from Denver on a clear day and you’ll see the domineering Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. No railroad could penetrate this formidable barrier, could it? Would Denver ever be on a transcontinental railroad? Maybe a narrow gauge pike or two could reach mining camps in the high country on steep grades and twisting curves, but that might be it. his thought could have passed through David H. Mofat’s mind as he looked out a window from his oice as president of First National Bank in Denver more than 125 years ago. Mofat, however, believed the answer to both questions was yes — and, with his business associates, formed a railroad company to ensure that was the case. Today, those formidable mountains remain. But so does Mofat’s railroad — although its construction proved to be the lengthy saga suggested by the geography it faced.
INTO THE MOUNTAINS When the irst transcontinental railroad was being built, and Union Paciic surveyors were scouring the Rocky Mountain region to ind the best route west, residents of Denver hoped the ledgling line would pass through their city. During one survey, Union Paciic chief engineer Grenville Dodge and his party barely reached safety ater an early winter blizzard chased them out of the mountains. Soon thereafter came word there was no practical transcontinental route through Denver. With Union Paciic choosing an easier grade through the rolling terrain of southern Wyoming, the Rockies looked to be a barrier that could forever leave Denver of 32
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the path of mainline railroads. his didn’t sit well with city leaders. Cheyenne appeared to be in position to replace Denver as a major transportation hub, which could jeopardize the city’s growth and prosperity. Mofat had the means and knowledge to address this. Born in New York in 1839, he became an entrepreneur at an early age and entered the banking business. Ater moving to Denver in 1860, he became involved in Colorado banking and built a substantial inancial empire, much of it involving the growth of Colorado’s railroads. By the turn of the century, Mofat was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the state. Drawing on his railroad experience, Mofat and business associates established the Denver, Northwestern & Paciic Railway in 1902. Its goal was a mainline railroad west to Salt Lake City. As with the ambitious plans of so many other infant railroads of the day, the “Paciic” part of the name would remain a dream. Mofat hired the brilliant H.A. Sumner as chief engineer, and construction began on Dec. 18, 1902. Rails soon pushed up the Front Range of the Rockies toward South Boulder Canyon. To maintain a 2-percent grade, and since South Boulder Creek dropped out of the mountains at a much higher gradient, Sumner devised a way to enter South Boulder Canyon at the highest
possible elevation. He laid out a route on a nearby mesa that looped back on itself, wrapped around the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon and bored through eight tunnels, entering South Boulder Canyon high above the creek. With additional tunnels on a 2-percent grade, South Boulder Creek was soon nearly at track level as the railroad pushed west to Pineclife. hat turnback loop and series of bores became known as today’s “Big 10 Curve” and the “Tunnel District.” hirty tunnels later, DNW&P reached Mammoth (soon renamed Tolland) in 1903. Originally, Mofat planned a long tunnel through the divide, but lack of funds and time forced the carrier to forge ahead over 11,680-foot Rollins Pass on a “temporary line.” A series of switchback curves, once clearly visible from Tolland and eventually known as “the Giant’s Ladder,” brought the rails over the loty pass at Corona. Severe weather haunted the highest through mainline railroad ever constructed. Winters were brutal, with snow and high winds making travel nearly impossible and oten unproitable. By winter 1904, the railroad reached Arrow, 11 miles west of Corona. It then marched across the loor of Middle Park to the town of Fraser by summer 1905. With slightly easier going, the tracks reached
Needing money to advance the road westward, Mofat headed for the East Coast to pursue funds to extend the line to Craig and inance the main range tunnel. he trip became his last when an exhausted David Mofat died in New York City on March 18, 1911.
THE BIG TUNNEL
A train pauses at Arrow on the Rollins Pass line in 1905. At left is the main line west to Middle Park, with its 4-percent grade.
Kremmling a year later, leaving an arduous push through Gore Canyon ahead. Gore Canyon presented incredibly dificult topography along the Grand (later Colorado) River. But that wasn’t the only obstacle to construction. he newly formed New Century Light & Power Co. planned a large reservoir and dam in Gore Canyon, thoroughly blocking the Mofat Road’s path. Legal wrangling and other battles inally came to a head with a hearing by President Teddy Roosevelt. he facts that emerged — such as insuicient planning for electrical generation and a lack of bedrock for a major dam — soon opened Gore Canyon to David Mofat and his railroad. Union Paciic’s E.H. Harriman is believed to have been behind New Century Light & Power in an attempt to thwart Mofat’s transcontinental dreams. Tracks inally reached Steamboat Springs in 1909. Construction of the DNW&P reportedly cost $75,000 per mile, with one rugged mile through Rock Creek Canyon costing at least $250,000. Worse, operations over Rollins Pass soaked up a fortune with each passing snowstorm. Mofat is estimated to have poured over $7 million of his own wealth into the railroad.
With no new investments, the DNW&P went bankrupt 15 months later. he railroad was soon reorganized as the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad and by Nov. 20, 1913, with inancial help from some of Mofat’s associates, rails inally reached Craig. But this long-anticipated milestone didn’t mean business would quickly materialize in the sparsely populated area. Slowly, trafic such as coal, forest products, and seasonal livestock developed. What the D&SL needed was the main tunnel through the Continental Divide. he treacherous route over Rollins Pass used up resources and was frequently blockaded, making shippers unhappy. World War I brought an increase in traic, especially coal from the Yampa coal ields, but the long, expensive trip over the hill remained a problem. Coal used for pulling trains over Rollins Pass during the war cost $2,000 a day. In 1917, the hapless railroad fell into receivership again. It would eventually reorganize as the Denver & Salt Lake Railway. In 1922, the state of Colorado voted to build the main range tunnel, establishing the Mofat Tunnel Improvement District. Work started from both sides of the divide using a “pioneer bore” method, with a smaller parallel tunnel allowing crosscuts to the main tunnel to work additional headings. Upon completion of construction, this “pioneer bore” would transport west-slope water to Denver — a feature that was instrumental in passing the tunnel legislation. he tunnel was “holed” through in 1927, and on Feb. 26, 1928, the tunnel opened, beginning a new era for the Mofat Road. Completing the tunnel was not the last part of David Mofat’s dream. Having reached Craig, 231 miles from Denver, the D&SL desired to extend its reach to Salt Lake City by building either its own line to Utah or a 40-mile line to connect with the Denver & Rio Grande Western. Western Paciic approved of the cutof, but Rio Grande didn’t want further competition from another transcontinental route. At the time, Rio Grande — controlled by Jay Gould’s Missouri Paciic — saw no advantage in a shorter main line from Denver to Salt Lake, since it used a Pueblo gateway. But when Burlington appeared ready to buy the D&SL, Rio Grande realized the cutof was inevitable, and bought majority interest in Mofat’s line.
David Moffat — banker, rail baron, said to be the wealthiest man in Colorado — at age 40. Librar y, State Historical Societ y of Colorado.
Construction of the cutof began in November 1932 and opened on June 16, 1934, inally realizing David Mofat’s dream of having Denver on a transcontinental railroad. Still, work continued. he old Mofat Road needed improvements to allow use of Rio Grande’s heavier motive power, and much of that work occurred the remainder of the decade. he railroad became the route of a new passenger train, the Exposition Flyer, operated jointly with CB&Q and WP from Chicago to San Francisco. hose improvements paid dividends with the advent of World War II, as the railroad was extremely busy and important to the war efort. As many as 30 trains a day shined the rails during the war, with more than 50 movements reported some days. Installation of automatic block signals began in 1941, followed by an early installation between Denver and East Portal of the new centralized traic control system. Rio Grande’s “new route” between Denver and Salt Lake City was 175 miles shorter than the old route via Pueblo, inally allowing it to compete for time-sensitive transcontinental traic with UP to the north and Santa Fe to the south. Truly, this is when Rio Grande could inally say “hru the Rockies, not around them,” thanks to the Mofat Road.
PASSENGER BUSINESS On April 11, 1947, the Denver & Salt Lake Railway merged with D&RGW, and passenger traic reached a peak, with ive www.TrainsMag.com
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Winter Park Ski Area, surviving until 2009. Eforts are underway to revive the service, ater two successful Amtrak excursions in March 2015 to mark Winter Park’s 75th anniversary. he 1980s saw a gradual decline in freight traic. With the last run of the Rio Grande Zephyr in April 1983, Rio Grande inally joined Amtrak and the route once again had a daily passenger train. Traic patterns began shiting when Union Paciic merged with both the Missouri Paciic and Western Paciic, causing Rio Grande to lose interchange partners and shit toward interchanging with the Southern Paciic. Denver businessman Philip Anschutz purchased the Rio Grande in 1984, and four years later also purchased the SP. For a while, the Rio Grande was operated independently, but soon the carrier chose to take on the brand of the larger and perhaps betterknown SP. Southern Paciic, with its eastern Kansas City gateway, used the Tennessee Pass route extensively, but some freight besides coal still rolled on the Mofat to interchange partner Burlington Northern in Denver. In 1996, UP merged SP into its camp, and by 1997, through trains over Tennessee Pass were discontinued. Changes and shits in freight traic continued and BNSF gained trackage rights over the Mofat Route in the agreements signed during the SP/UP merger. I sometimes wonder what David Mofat would think of
Do
trains a day to and from Denver. Some would say the best came in March 1949 when a new Budd-built stainless steel streamliner, the California Zephyr, replaced the Exposition Flyer, operating on roughly the same schedule. As passenger trains disappeared in the late 1950s and ’60s, freight traic picked up, as more coal began shipping out of Orestod from what now was the Craig Branch. When the U.S. nationalized passenger trains in 1971, maverick Rio Grande chose to keep Amtrak of its railroad and ran its own streamliner between Denver and Salt Lake City, albeit only three round trips per week. he Rio Grande Zephyr could be considered a stepchild of the CZ, but developed its own following and connection with the communities it served. Controlling operation and dispatching of its own passenger train turned out to be a good move for the Rio Grande with the explosion of unit coal trains in the 1970s following passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970. Up to six coal trains loaded on the Craig Branch each day, with the corresponding empties adding up to 12 trains a day on the main line to Denver. Seasonally, another special train plied the Mofat Route: the Ski Train. Its long history began with a 1936 special to the winter sports carnival in Hot Sulphur Springs, with the irst Rio Grande Ski Train to Winter Park operating in 1947. he train became a ixture for avid skiers and an institution for the city-owned
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Rio Grande’s “Railblazer” piggyback train leaves Denver behind as it begins its overnight trip to Salt Lake City, climbing out of Leyden on a clear, hot July 9, 1989. Rio Grande’s black-and-gold paint gave way to Southern Pacific’s gray and scarlet after a 1988 merger.
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Volcano Crater Orestod Red Gorge Radium Azure Gore Canyon Kremmling Flat Byers Canyon Sulphur Granby Tabernash Fraser Fraser Canyon Winter Park Moffat Tunnel Tolland Rollinsville Pinecliffe Crescent Plainview Big Ten curve Leyden Arvada Utah Junction Denver Union Station Tabernash Fraser Vasquez Arrow Loop Corona Rollins Pass Needles Eye Tunnel Antelope Giant’s Ladder Tolland
Toponas
To Denver
Big Ten curve
sh na
Gr an by
Pa Flat rs ha ll Su lph ur
e ing
ml
ble so m
Haybro Oak Creak Phippsburg Yampa
7,000
5,000 200
Tunnel 1
Fraser Canyon
Moffat Tunnel Inset map area
6,000
220
Pi
le ins vil Ro ll
To ll UP ( D&SL )
Winter Park
5,000 140
Scale
Fraser
6,000
160
12 11
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Rick Johnson
Tr ou
Kr em
Milner Adams Steamboat Springs Sidney
Bond
7,000
Craig Evans Dorsey
Dell
Range
Dotsero
Formerly to Tennessee Pass, Pueblo
8 7 10 6 5 4 14 3 16 15 2
13
East Ridge 0
Range
Sage o/s
17
N
Byers Canyon Rock Creek Toponas Gore Canyon Gore Toponas Summit Canyon Azure Little Gore Canyon Egeria Canyon Crater Volcano Radium Crater Loops McCoy Red Gorge )L &S Dell (D Burns Orestod UP East Bond (Bond)
18
Plainview
er
Yampa
21
Coal Creek Canyon
CONTI
) D&SL UP (
Phippsburg
L
NEN
Moffat Tunnel
TA
Winter Park
Ea st Po r
Haybro Edna Oak Creek
23
22 20 19
South Boulder Canyon
30
&SL) UP (D
25 27 26 24
29
an
ta l
Sidney Park
cli
Rollins Pass Needles Eye Tunnel Jenny Lake Corona Antelope Giant’s Ladder Loop Old D&SL grade
P Ar acifi ro c w
UP (D &S L)
d
Fraser
Steamboat Springs
DIVIDE
Ad a
ms
Fort Collins To Tabernash, Orestod
6,000 5,000
140
120
100
80
60
DENVER-ORESTOLD
40
20
0
80
60
ROLLINS PASS
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The westbound California Zephyr climbs the 2-percent grade west of Plainview, Colo., on June 8, 2013. Having passed through Tunnel No. 8, the train is passing the site of Tunnel No. 9, which was eventually daylighted, and is about to enter Tunnel No. 10.
the fact that nearly a century later, the company of his old corporate enemy E.H. Harriman owns his beloved Mofat line.
A TOUR OF THE ROUTE Join me for a brief tour of one of David Mofat’s proudest achievements. he trip starts at milepost 0, Denver Union Station. Originally, competitors kept Mofat’s railroad out of the facility, so it operated its own Mofat Road station a few blocks to the west. Leaving downtown, tracks head north through Prospect Junction toward Adams County, where North Yard was constructed in 1949 ater the merger of the Rio Grande and D&SL. his allowed the Moffat facilities at Utah Junction, on the north side of the new yard, to be removed or used for other purposes. As we pass the former D&SL yard, we curve west toward Arvada and get a good look at the looming Rockies ahead. he grade is noticeable as we pass the irst siding beyond town, Leyden, staying on the high side of a ridge while gaining elevation. Rocky siding, once known as Arena, is where the fun really begins, with several levels of track visible straight ahead. Leaving Rocky we arc south on a bend nicknamed “Little 10 Curve.” he tracks soon encircle a mesa where the “Big 10 Curve” brings the rails westward again. Both names relect the degrees of curvature. Big 10 Curve is exposed to strong winds that can careen down the Front Range mountains, and on several occa36
COLORADO RAILROADS
sions, empty trailers on a latcar or an auto rack blew over and derailed on a moving train. About 1972, the Rio Grande placed a string of retired open-top hoppers illed with rock and dirt on the inside of the curve, efectively creating a windbreak to protect passing trains. he next siding along the hillside is Eisele, renamed in 2013 to honor a retiring UP oicial. Previously, it was known as Clay, and before that as Fireclay, for a claymining community. Curving toward the mountains, we cross Blue Mountain Drive, one of the area’s few grade crossings and a great place to watch trains climb or descend the steep grade. Crossing the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon, it is interesting to note that instead of the current route that H.A. Sumner recommended, other surveys routed the railroad up Coal Creek Canyon and required a large tunnel through a ridge to reach South Boulder Creek. As we climb toward Tunnel 1 — the irst of many — we can look east over the great plains to see Denver in the distance. Passing through aptly named Plainview brings us to a succession of seven more tunnels through the spectacular Flatirons. Curving out of Tunnel 8, we are high above South Boulder Creek, leaving the latlands of Colorado behind. Between here and Pineclife, there is only room for one siding, at Crescent, between tunnels 18 and 19. In a short canyon between Pineclife and Rollinsville is Tunnel 30. he next one is the big one through the divide. he foundation of an old icehouse is
visible if you look carefully near the west end of the siding. Icehouses such as this one and another located west of Pineclife at Pactolus cut ice on nearby ponds and were important railroad customers, shipping ice to Denver and points east. Soon we reach Tolland, with the “Giant’s Ladder” visible climbing to the west. Straight ahead is the imposing Continental Divide, which David Mofat chose to cross over Rollins Pass on a temporary line. he wye we pass at East Portal is actually a small remnant of that line, now a rough four-wheel-drive trail up to the blocked Needles Eye Tunnel. We plunge into darkness for a 6.21mile trip through the great divide inside the Mofat Tunnel. When the overnight Prospector passenger train still traveled
Spring is just days away, but in the Rockies, the scene still has a distinctly wintery tint as four Southern Pacific AC4400CWs, displaying their Rio Grande-inspired “speed lettering,” lead an empty coal train at Crescent, Colo., on March 19, 1998. The Rio Grande Ski Train waits at Fraser, Colo., on Jan. 3, 2004. Soon, the train will depart for Winter Park to pick up its load of skiers, tired and ready to return to Denver after a day on the slopes.
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A Southern Pacific coal empty climbs through the loops at Crater, Colo., on July 30, 1996. A single AC4400CW, No. 298, leads the train, with two mid-train distributed power units out of sight and two more, Nos. 361 and 226, bringing up the rear.
between Salt Lake City and Denver, experienced male travelers on eastbound trips would use the straight, smooth run on welded rail through the tunnel as a good time for their morning shave. Popping out of the west portal into bright daylight and swinging through a right-hand curve, we pass the base of Winter Park Ski Area. We then drop down the grade of Winter Park Hill to Fraser, sometimes known as the nation’s icebox, where extreme winter temperatures reign. Tabernash is the location of a wye that was used to turn the Ski Train. he siding here is part of the old main line that remains ater a new, more direct alignment was constructed in 1945. Tabernash was also 38
COLORADO RAILROADS
D&SL’s division point, and later housed a small engine facility for helpers used on the steep Winter Park Hill. Leaving Tabernash, the route passes through remote Fraser Canyon to Granby and Hot Sulphur Springs. Immediately after departing Sulphur, the railroad snakes through the narrow conines of Byers Canyon. Faster running past Flat and Troublesome takes us into Kremmling, where the Rio Grande’s inal livestock extra loaded in autumn 1979. Once the railroad departs Kremmling, it follows the Colorado River into the dramatic depths of Gore Canyon, once such a physical and political barrier for Mofat’s advancement west. Azure siding is located
between the rugged canyon and a smaller one to the west, Little Gore Canyon, which is no less scenic or sinuous. More scenic miles along the Colorado River bring the railroad to Orestod and the crew change at Bond. Orestod connected the Mofat Road to the Rio Grande main line using the Dotsero Cutof completed in 1934. he connection to the Rio Grande was at the station of Dotsero, and where it tied into the D&SL was named Orestod, which is Dotsero spelled backward. here’s no way to experience the Mofat Road by passenger train west of here, as the Yampa Valley Mail was discontinued in 1968, and Amtrak uses the cutof.
As two fishermen try their luck on the Colorado River, Amtrak’s California Zephyr pops out of 63-foot-long Tunnel 40 in Little Gore Canyon, west of Azure, Colo., on June 3, 2013.
nects to the branch, and Evans, a junction with the Axial Spur. Tracks abruptly end in Craig, where David Mofat’s dream of the railroad to Salt Lake City came to a halt. But this doesn’t mean the railroad was built for naught. Coal traic was slow to develop, but it did indeed do so as our nation expanded and needed more energy sources. By the 1970s, new mines were opening up on the Craig Branch and more coal lowed eastward on the Mofat Road. But like so many other mining booms in our history, coal from Routt County faced challenging times. he change wasn’t just on the Craig Branch. It was much more profound, as Rio Grande’s “main line thru the Rockies” went from Southern Paciic into Union Paciic in less than a decade. Climbing out of Orestod, the Mofat Road uses a pair of little-known loops at Crater to gain elevation as it enters spectacular Rock Creek Canyon. Passing a loty siding named Volcano, the railroad burrows through more tunnels and Egeria Canyon, climbing to the Toponas Summit. Trains pass the unique geologic formation Finger Rock as the railroad passes through the fertile Yampa Valley on the way to Phippsburg. A yard at Phippsburg — P’burg in local railroad parlance — is where coal trains are staged for loading. As the track curves along Oak Creek toward Steamboat Springs, it passes former coal-loading site Edna. From Steamboat, the track generally heads westward along the Yampa River past Adams, where the Energy Spur con-
THE MOFFAT TODAY he 20 trains a day that traveled the main line a decade ago have decreased due to shiting traic patterns and energy policy. UP has moved through freight to its parallel route through Wyoming, and coal trains have declined precipitously. UP reports an 80 percent drop in Colorado coal shipments since 2005. Today, UP and BNSF each average a pair of manifest freight trains per day over the Mofat, and there is about one coal train a day. Add Amtrak and you have six to seven trains a day on average. Experiencing today’s railroading on the Mofat line can be an exercise in patience. Sometimes I’ll head out to watch and photograph trains on the Mofat route by cen-
tering my trackside visit on one of the Amtrak trains, hoping to run into a freight or two in the process. Perhaps the best way to experience the railroad is on Amtrak’s California Zephyr. Head west into the mountains riding No. 5 on a sunny morning, its stainless steel train swinging back and forth climbing through the Big 10 Curves. Passing through 28 tunnels, the constantly climbing and curving passenger train inally plunges into the 6.2 miles of darkness that is the Mofat Tunnel. Or take No. 6 on an autumn or winter evening with dusk settling in. Slip through a curving Tunnel 8 and all of a sudden it seems like you could be on a descending airliner on inal approach, looking down on the twinkling lights of a sprawling Denver. Either train will take you through the awe-inspiring canyons and Tunnel District with enough daylight to enjoy the sights. If David Mofat could look west from Denver today, he would still see the massive mountains lining a seemingly impenetrable Continental Divide. But he would be proud that his farsighted and aggressive deeds inally made possible a mainline railroad west of Denver. Even though he might be disturbed that his arch enemy Union Paciic is running the show, he would be proud to ind a tunnel and county named ater him. While almost all of the railroads he was involved in are now gone, knowing that the Mofat Road still sees trains crossing “hru the Rockies, not around them” would surely make him smile. www.TrainsMag.com
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In the late 1800s, not far from the summit, far above the tree line, a Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway train pauses for water high in the Rockies. L.C. McClure
To the
TOP Pikes Peak cog celebrates 125 years on the climb by Jeff Terry 40
COLORADO RAILROADS
IN 1806, WHEN ZEBULON PIKE irst laid eyes upon the mountain west of Colorado Springs that today bears his name, he believed it to be “unclimbable.” Reaching the summit of Pikes Peak by foot was a challenge; however, just 14 years later man walked upon its 14,115-t summit. Reaching it by rail seven decades later took ingenuity and audacity. On June 30, 1891, the engineer of a new Baldwin eased back on the throttle and started the locomotive upgrade from Manitou Springs towards the top of Pikes Peak, a technological achievement that astounded a nation just two decades removed from the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. In 2016, the Manitou & Pikes Peak, renowned as the highest railway in North America, celebrates its 125th anniversary, and will commemorate the milestone with historical lectures, equipment displays, and train rides with its restored steam locomotive. he railroad was incorporated in 1888 as a passenger line whose sole purpose was to ferry tourists to the top of the mountain. By necessity it was built as a cog or “rack” railway, which allowed it to climb steep grades with relative ease. While the railroad was not the irst cog line in the United States — that honor goes to New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Cog Railway, opened in 1868 — it set itself apart by adopting the more advanced Abt rack-and-pinion system, invented by a Swiss railway engineer in 1885. he Abt design employs a pair of rack rails mounted between the running rails. A double set of gears underneath the locomotive engage teeth in the
Pike Toll s Peak Roa d
MANITOU & PIKES PEAK
Pikes P Toll Ro eak ad
Cascade Toll gate
24
Colorado Midland SG (1882-1920); to Midland Terminal (1921-1949)
Manitou Springs Elev. 6,571' CM Depot (now a residence); M&PP 0-4-2 Cog No. 2 displayed
Pikes Peak Summit House Elev. 14,110'
Mount Manitou Elev. 8,550'
MANITOU DEPOT
Elev. 6,571' Mt. Manitou M&PP 0-4-2T (Cog Railway) SG Scenic Incline Cog No. 4 Railway SG displayed (1907-1990) Mountain View Now a hiking trail Maximum grade 25%
Manitou & Pikes Peak
N Windy Point
0
Scale
5 miles
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Bill Metzger
A rare clear day on the summit of Pikes Peak shows a magnificent view from the 14,000-foot level. Tracks end with substantial rack rails, allowing trains to ascend steep grades without slipping, a critically important attribute, as trains routinely negotiate inclines as bumper posts that go right to the edge of the cliff. Steve Pat terson steep as 25 percent. In 1979 the Colorado Railroad Museum exchanged No. 4 for a Rather than going straight up the side of the mountain, the railsimilar locomotive, and ater being restored, No. 4 made its irst road was built more like a traditional railroad. his allowed for a runs back at Manitou Springs under steam in 1980. Although it gentler grade (16 percent on average verses 25 percent for Mount can no longer reach the summit because water facilities at the upWashington), but proved more expensive, because the nine mile per elevations have been removed, No. 4 draws big crowds every route required to reach the summit necessitated a great deal of cuttime it runs, and the railroad is justiiably proud that it is the only ting and ill work in rugged Englemann Canyon. Today, as they have for 125 years, trains depart from the base sta- Vauclain compound locomotive operating in the world. Doty is quick to point out that while steam is what got the railtion in Manitou Springs and climb through alpine scenery to the top road started, it was the GE streamliners and modern diesels that of Pikes Peak, where the tracks come to an end at windswept Sumkept the line in operation, and all three have played an important mit House. In the early days, a leet of six steam locomotives pushed role over the years. “M&PP is proud of its heritage, and has kept rather than pulled coaches to lessen the possibility of a runaway. active one of each type of railroad equipment it has used,” he says. Custom-built by Baldwin, they sported horizontal boilers ofset to “During our celebrations in 2016, in addition to the steam runs, 16 degrees to compensate for the gradient of the line. All were evenwe will be exhibiting one of our GE streamlined locomotives and a tually rebuilt into Vauclain compounds that were more economical coach from the 1950s, along with snow plow No. 22, which was to operate but notoriously diicult to maintain. built in the M&PP shops in 1973.” Spencer Penrose, owner of the famous Broadmoor Hotel in ColWhile the historical equipment is attractive to railfans, the railorado Springs, purchased a stake in the railroad just before the Great road is irmly rooted in the present. Doty says that the railroad is Depression. Under his control the railroad began a period of modcontinually moving forward by upgrading its ernization. Steam locomotives were replaced by a rolling stock, installing modern air brakes sysleet of streamlined aluminum-bodied General tems, and doing general retroits. Of course, Electric internal-combustion locomotives beginsafety has always been a top priority. “One of the ning in the 1930s, and the railroad further modmain reasons I feel that the railway is where it’s at ernized during the 1960s when it switched to selftoday is our group of caring employees and mancontained diesel-hydraulics imported from agers who made sure that passenger safety was Switzerland. Today, two-unit, Swiss-built articualways irst,” he says. Indeed, the railroad has lated trainsets, which seat 214 passengers, are the never logged a single passenger accident in 125 workhorses of the passenger leet. years of passenger operation. Despite being progressively modern, the he railroad of today is a testament to the railroad has seen it to embrace its rich history. men and women that have kept it running over A wooden coach, one of six built in the 1890s, the years. “Not a lot of companies manage to was restored in 1976. It was so well received reach 100 years, let alone 125,” Doty says, relectthat a few years later the railroad resurrected ing on the importance of the railway’s 125th steam locomotive No. 4, which came to the line in 1897. “No. 4 was the last operating steam lobirthday. “We at the cog are proud of this milecomotive at the railroad,” says Mike Doty, a stone. he M&PP was built to haul passengers to Two-unit, Swiss-built diesellong-time employee who currently serves as the summit of ‘America’s Mountain’ — Pikes hydraulics operate on today’s maintenance supervisor. He says that its inal Peak — and we continue doing that to this day.” Pikes Peak line. Michael T. Burkhar t trip to the summit occurred on Sept. 3, 1958, If you’ve never visited the Pikes Peak cog railwhen it was used to power a special train for the Rocky Mountain way, 2016 is a great year to do so. Ceremonial runs are scheduled Railroad Club. “Ater that it was kept at the railway to help with for late May, and on June 30 steam engine No. 4 will make four ice and snow removal in the early 1960s, but let in 1968 — doshort trips with coach No. 104 (limited to 50 passengers). Other nated to the Colorado Railroad Museum — to make room for the events are scheduled throughout the summer; for more informaarrival of new diesel-electric units.” tion visit cograilway.com. www.TrainsMag.com
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The power of a BNSF grain train is reflected in the waters of Palmer Lake as the train heads south on Colorado’s Joint Line. Frank Keller
A route
CAUGHT IN Colorado’s Joint Line is long on history, but short on needed capacity by Steve Patterson
TRAFFIC www.TrainsMag.com
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I
It began because of water: too much rain for too long. Today, Colorado’s Joint Line — the route south of Denver which owes its name to an agreement involving a long-gone, waterlogged railroad — exists as a cooperative efort between BNSF Railway and Union Paciic. Particularly for BNSF, it remains a vital stretch of railroad. But in an echo of its beginnings, the modern Joint Line has been plagued by a diferent kind of lood: Too much traic trying to squeeze through a bottleneck created when the two railroads picked exactly the wrong moment to convert more than 30 miles of double-track operation to a single track near Colorado Springs. From the beginning, the area east of the Rockies and south of Denver was a sore spot for railroads. William J. Palmer had built his 3-foot-gauge Denver & Rio Grande from Denver to Pueblo by June 1872 and Cyrus K. Holliday extended his Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe from Topeka to Pueblo four years later. But there wasn’t a celebration or a party — there was hostility, with both roads trying to get to the orerich town of Leadville. he narrow Royal Gorge could barely accommodate one rail line. he famous Tripartite Agreement of March 27, 1880, among the UP, the Santa Fe, and the Rio Grande spelled out who could build track where in Colorado for the next 10 years. For the Santa Fe to serve customers in booming Denver, its freight had to be aggravatingly transloaded to narrow gauge cars to move over the Rio Grande, until Rio Grande added a third rail to Denver in 1881. Still, it wasn’t kind to the Santa Fe with its freight rates, forcing the Santa Fe to build its own line to Denver
With 2-8-8-2 No. 3602 on the point, a Rio Grande freight waits on the siding for a Santa Fe passenger train near Monument, Colo., on Feb. 3, 1947. Lawrence Calkins
in 1887. It closely paralleled the Rio Grande but was not allowed to cross its track at grade, so Santa Fe had to bridge over its competitor at three locations. Further out in the prairies to the east, another upstart railroad — the Denver & New Orleans — had built its standard gauge line from Denver to Pueblo in 1882, with its sights on Texas. It completely avoided Colorado Springs, and its hasty construction rendered it unable to cope with the rains and washouts, leading the line to bankruptcy in 1885. It eventually wound up as part of the Colorado & Southern. To ofer its customers some semblance of reliability, the C&S was handing over
Eight Santa Fe and Burlington Northern engines power a Santa Fe freight on the Rio Grande-owned northbound Joint Line track at Castle Rock, Colo., in 1973. Mel Patrick
44
COLORADO RAILROADS
more of its traic to the Santa Fe between Denver and Pueblo. As if to wave a lag of surrender to Mother Nature, the C&S signed its irst Joint Line contract with the Santa Fe on Aug. 1, 1900. he Rio Grande was not a party to the agreement. Every 15 years or so the contract was renewed, and the few C&S train crews affected were ultimately eliminated by attrition. With the formation of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 1995, it’s all the same family now, with no Joint Line contract. But the name stuck. here was relative peace between the Rio Grande (the “Western” was added in 1921) and Santa Fe. his was true even after the United States Railroad Administration took them over during World War I and yanked out some kinks (but made a new one at Spruce) when it physically made one track for all southbound trains and the other for northbounds. he USRA really didn’t need to do that; it could have simply decreed that all southbound trains would use, say, the Rio Grande, and all northbound trains would travel the Santa Fe. Ater the war, both railroads decided to leave operations as they were — with Rio Grande dispatchers handling the southbounds and the Santa Fe the northbounds. heir successor roads continue that coexistence today at Omaha and Fort Worth. he Rio Grande’s tracks slipped by the west side of downtown Colorado Springs; Santa Fe went up the east side. By the early 1970s, citizens were growing tired of and losing sleep from the noisy northbound trains blowing at all the grade crossings. he city wanted that track gone, so much so that it ofered $1 million to make it go away. Now that the city had Santa Fe’s attention, where was the railroad to go? It had to
Two BNSF trains and one from UP meet at Spruce on Aug. 16, 2007. Just to the south at Palmer Lake, the Joint Line becomes a single-track bottleneck. Drew Mitchem
start making medicine with the Rio Grande: Can we also travel your track through town? So 26.7 miles of Santa Fe track disappeared between Kelker and Palmer Lake, and 5.4 miles of Rio Grande track between Kelker and Crews were consolidated with Santa Fe’s — a total of 32.1 miles of new CTC single track with four sidings, controlled by Santa Fe (later BNSF) dispatchers, beginning Sept. 12, 1974. Was taking out 32 miles of track a good idea? What else was occurring in the early ’70s? Up in northeastern Wyoming developers were practically rolling up the sod to uncover unfathomable tons of shovel-ready coal. No sooner had Santa Fe satisied the folks of Colorado Springs than here came all those Powder River Basin coal trains. he single track has been the Joint Line’s bane ever since. Ask any trainman out there and he’ll tell you it was a nightmare that wouldn’t go away, but with a decline in traic it has relaxed a bit. I know. I was one of them for 19 years. Do you think for a minute I miss being ensnared in that trap? he Joint Line has a way to take any fun out of railroading. If one train in that 32 miles of CTC snaps in two, breaks down, stalls out, or whatever, the dominoes start falling and soon Renzenberger crew-van drivers are being called.
A southbound piggyback train from Santa Fe’s Big Lift facility passes Spruce. Ultimately, difficulty in competing for intermodal traffic doomed Big Lift’s original purpose. Wesley Fox
Making the 12 hours of work limitation tighter, the crews have to cover a lot of ground. Since Sept. 3, 2003, BNSF coal and through-freight pool crews no longer step of ater 119 miles at Pueblo but continue another 65 miles to La Junta. here they climb into a van, which carries them 80 miles to their tie-up motel at Trinidad. hat stretch of lonely Highway 350 can be daunting in the winter. Ater resting, waiting, and waiting some more, crews go back on duty at Trinidad and run trains 210 miles up the former C&S through Pueblo to Denver. To conclude their triangular run within the 12-hour law, they have to keep moving. Some former BN crews work out of their home terminal of Trinidad, making Denver their away-fromhome terminal. Former Santa Fe crews liv-
ing in La Junta run south to Amarillo, lay over, run north to Trinidad, and then are driven the opposite direction on Highway 350 back to La Junta. he crews call these one-way trains “running the loops.” In latter 2014 and early 2015, the Joint Line nearly came to a standstill because of too many miles restricted to 10 mph, principally on UP track. It oten required three crews to get a train from Denver to La Junta as movements backed up waiting for one train to get through the gauntlet, causing crews to expire on the federal 12 hours. In desperation, BNSF negotiated an agreement with the UP in May 2015 whereby BNSF would perform all maintenance on the southward main track (carrying most of the heavy tonnage, 90 percent of it BNSF compared to 10 percent for the UP) while UP www.TrainsMag.com
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To Cheyenne, Wyo. UP
Boulder
To Alliance and Lincoln, Neb. SF
BN SF
BN
To Salt Lake City
UP
Utah Jct. BNSF
Golden
Commerce City UP 36th St. Yard BNSF 31st St. Yard DENVER UP Burnham shops (closed) South Denver
UP North Yard BNSF Rennick Yard
UP BNSF
COLORADO
Denver
Map area
Colorado Springs La Pueblo Junta Walsenburg Trinidad
THE JOINT LINE
Englewood Littleton
BNSF BNSF Railway UP Union Pacific Other lines Not all lines shown Military sites
Blakeland Acequia
Sedalia Orsa Castle Rock
Larkspur SF
BN
UP
Spruce Palmer Lake Monument
Husted Stadium
U.S. Air Force Academy Academy
UP
Colorado Springs Kelker SF BN
Fort Carson
Crews F BNS UP
Fountain Ray Nixon Power Plant
Buttes Wigwam UP
BNSF
Cañon City
Bragdon
UP
UP
F BNS
N 0
Scale
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Rick Johnson
25 miles
BNSF
Pueblo Yards PUEBLO
At the Joint Line’s south end, BNSF trains pass at Pueblo Junction in 2008. Drew Mitchem
would maintain the northbound main. BNSF invested several millions in new ballast to raise sunken track and replaced thousands of defective concrete ties. Union Paciic still maintains a switcher at Colorado Springs to serve carload customers, yet its Joint Line traic is down to a few coal trains going to the Drake Power Plant in downtown Colorado Springs or the Nixon Power Plant south of Fountain, and a nightly freight each way between Denver and Pueblo. None of its coal trains originating in Colorado run over the BNSF to reach Texas, as they vanished when UP’s Colorado coal loadings diminished 80 percent since 2005. Its Mofat line is not nearly
F BNS UP
Big Lift
To Kansas City, Mo. UP
Site, 1904 Eden train wreck Pueblo Jct. BNSF
To La Junta
To Trinidad
as busy as it used to be. UP closed its Denver Burnham Shops in February 2016 and 70 acres of land and buildings are available for industrial redevelopment.
PIGS AND BIG LIFT Santa Fe never had its own ramp or piggyback facility in Denver until August 1976. hat’s when it acquired 60 acres conveniently located between the two main lines, albeit 18 miles south of the city, so that northward trains could set out their trailers and southward trains could pick them up. At a cost of $2.5 million, the facility opened March 31, 1977, and President John Reed named it Big Lit. But eventually Santa Fe was unable to compete with BN for fast service to Chicago or with the UP for trailers or containers to California. he only advantageous route for Santa Fe was to Texas, but there was never a volume of such traic. he two straddlebuggy cranes were subsequently disassembled, loaded into gondola cars and shipped to Houston. Big Lit evolved into six public team tracks for any customer’s use, and for years, plastic pellets, lour, structural steel, chemicals and, for a short time, bottled wine were unloaded. Next, it became a place for recycling track materials as well as for a bulk landscaper. When Big Lit opened, it had its own supervisory agent and a dozen clerks. Today,
A train of military equipment — a relatively common sight, given the nearby Army base at Fort Carson — passes through Colorado Springs on Sept. 26, 2015. Frank Keller
it provides oice space for a “mentor” who is a Joint Line locomotive engineer. hree men choose to work that assignment, each on duty 12 hours for four days, then of for 21⁄2 days before returning to work four 12hour nights. Trying to keep the Joint Line liquid, they are essentially quick responders for locomotive breakdowns, especially distributed power units. BNSF also has pusher locos available at Big Lit when needed, with an extra-board crew being driven down from Denver.
Since the BNSF merger, all trailers and containers are handled at Rennick Yard in downtown Denver, adjacent to Rio Grande’s former North Yard, now UP. BN’s facility for handling new automobiles on the northeast side of Denver was cramped, so more than two years ago, BNSF Helpers stand by at BNSF’s Big Lift, the former Santa Fe piggyback facility south of Denver seeing new life as a location to unload auto racks. Steve Pat terson
The Joint Line’s
PASSENGER PAST AT LEAST A COUPLE OF GENERATIONS OF COLORADO RESIDENTS might find this hard to imagine, but the Joint Line has a fairly rich history as a passenger-train route. Colorful passenger trains of five railroads have operated over the Joint Line. The first to drop service was the Rock Island, from Colorado Springs to Pueblo in the early 1900s. The last major line to reach Colorado — Jay Gould’s Missouri Pacific — handed its Colorado Eagle over to the Denver & Rio Grande Western at Pueblo to reach Denver. By the mid-1960s, Missouri Pacific’s and Rio Grande’s remaining trains were discontinued, four to five years ahead of Amtrak. Rivaling MoPac’s service, with a dome car and sleepers, was Burlington’s Colorado & Southern subsidiary, with round-end observation tavern-lounge-dining cars and sleepers between Denver and Texas. Blaming the U.S. Government because of the loss of the mail contract, C&S’s shiny stainless steel Texas Zephyr expired Sept. 11, 1967, a precursor to Santa Fe’s weak piggyback or container demand in the direction of Texas. One might recall that Dallas had the distinction on May 31, 1969, of becoming the largest city in the U.S. without passenger train service. The last warrior, making it to Amtrak Day — May 1, 1971 — was Santa Fe, with its three- or four-car connector service to its Transcon trains at La Junta. For a number of years, one of Santa Fe’s few E units worked that train, and I rode in its cab frequently while working as Secretary to the Division Superintendant at La Junta in 1967, long before I had any inkling of becoming a hoghead on the Joint Line. On the last round trip from Denver to La Junta and back, the evening of April 30, the Intermountain Chapter NRHS’s private car, ex-CB&Q office car No. 96, was attached, full of guests enjoying the last ride. They arrived back in Denver at 2:16 a.m. on Amtrak’s birthday. As if by divine providence, the Joint Line was now clear of passenger trains just as Powder River coal traffic burst forth. As other passenger trains were making their final runs over the Joint Line, Santa Fe’s extra or special passenger service was making a lot of friends. During football season, and before every passenger car would be needed for holiday traffic, Santa Fe regularly coupled up 18 or more high-level or conventional chair cars with several dining cars and ran them as four specials out to the United States Air Force Academy just north of Colorado Springs. They proceeded on the old northward track to Palmer Lake, where the power ran around the trains to take them down Rio Grande’s track to the Academy. Two loading tracks with generous space for the arriving buses of cadets were built on Academy property, and still exist today, minus the north end
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Southbound Santa Fe train No. 191, with one of the railroad’s handful of E8s, pauses at Colorado Springs en route to La Junta, Colo., on Aug. 9, 1968. Three photos, Steve Pat terson heading-in switch. Wherever Air Force’s Falcons played a competing team on AT&SF’s map (usually in the Chicago area, such as when Notre Dame, Army, or Navy came to the Windy City), Santa Fe took them. Unlike the cramped and hot troop trains of World War II, the Falcon trains may be fondly remembered by many Academy graduates. Joint Line devotees may not readily recall that it was site of one of the worst train wrecks in U.S. history on Aug. 7, 1904. Southbound Missouri Pacific train No. 11, in the charge of a Denver & Rio Grande crew and Ten-Wheeler No. 1009, had 162 passengers and crew in the baggage car, two coaches, two sleepers and Rio Grande diner Glenwood on the rear. (The Ten-Wheeler and diner were to come off at Pueblo that evening.) The train was fewer than 9 miles from Pueblo Union Station and moving at cautionary restricted speed over a trestle in Hogan’s Gulch when the bridge, which had been undermined by a sudden flood, collapsed under the weight of the 4-6-0. All but the last three cars plunged in, claiming 96 lives. So swift was the current that a female body was found 11 miles downstream. Another 14 people were reported missing but never found. Tony Fisher, age 29, had been badly cut by broken glass and barbed wire, but recovered in a hospital and was sent home. Later he became sick with tetanus poisoning and died on Sept. 1, becoming the 97th victim. — Steve Patterson Burlington’s Texas Zephyr, with Colorado & Southern-lettered E5 No. 9955 on the point, pauses in Pueblo on Jan. 23, 1966.
The heaviest load to move on the Joint Line — a 628-ton reactor, transported by BNSF from Houston to a refinery in Commerce City, Colo., by a 36-axle, 370-ton Schnabel car — passes through Palmer Lake in April 2005. The move was limited to 15 mph.
reclaimed Big Lit and its long concrete pads for unloading new automobiles. Almost every auto arrives from the south on the Joint Line, which averages ive or six vehicle trains per week. When the loads arrive, the empty trilevels have been coupled up and are ready to move or have already departed southward. A privately owned diesel resides at Big Lit to switch the cars, manned by the auto unloader’s own engineer. hrough security gates, loads of autos leave the yard for several points in the Intermountain West. he old auto unloading facility on the other side of Denver has been handling cement trains of 50 to 100 cars, originating just south of Pueblo to supply Denver’s ever-burgeoning concrete needs.
PERSONNEL AND TRAFFIC Most Joint Line management relocated from Denver to Gillette, Wyo., a few years ago, leaving a superintendent of operations to mind the store. While it’s been two decades since the merger, I am told an “us versus them” attitude still exists among crew members, and between crewmen and management. But at least inbound Joint Line crews aren’t deliberately held outside of Denver yard until their hours of service expire, as in the olden days, as usually they have little let on their 12-hour clock. he occasional new hires learn to cope with the so-called “availability policy” or don’t stay employed. Computers track crewmen to ensure they don’t lay of more than 25 percent of the weekend days in a month or 25 percent of the weekdays, which works out to two weekend days and ive weekdays. So don’t expect to be of more than one weekend per month. Unlike the practice for many years on other lines in Colorado, the
humbug Joint Line doesn’t recognize holidays; they’re just days on the calendar. hat’s a psychological obstacle for a new hire. With depressing news from around the country, especially in the Appalachians, about declining coal business, how many coal trains travel the Joint Line? A twoweek examination in fall 2015 provides an update. Loaded coal trains from the Powder River Basin moving southward ranged from as few as six to a high of 13 per day, averaging 9.3 a day. Northward empties numbered as few as four one day to a high of 14, averaging 9.2 a day. In January 2016, BNSF averaged eight southbound trains, about 5.5 of which were loaded coal. Total northbound trains averaged nine, about 5.7 of them coal empties. As in previous years, most loads and empties operate over the Joint Line on weekends when crewmen want to be home, suggesting there still is a penchant for maintenance-of-way gangs taking possession of the tracks during weekdays. hey earn overtime hours working weekends or nights while trainmen don’t. For a visiting railfan, midday is the slowest period. Is it true what goes around comes around? Ater the BNSF merger, it seemed the dominant ex-BN management team in Colorado wanted to close Santa Fe’s yard at Pueblo, which it claimed was unneeded. he yard opened in 1950, cost $2 million, and was a miniature of Santa Fe’s Argentine Yard at Kansas City, Kan. Pueblo’s version had a hump with a mechanical retarder, 17 bowl classifying tracks, and three long hump leads to receive trains. he yard declined to one switch crew per shit, the yardmaster’s tower closed and Denver’s Rennick yardmaster controlled movements at Pueblo. However, with Denver’s 31st Street Yard
unable to handle all the switching, some BNSF trains now run on to Pueblo, where they are redesignated and continue to Kansas or Texas with a new crew for the short trip to La Junta, where another crew takes over. Assistant trainmaster (yardmaster) jobs have been restored at Pueblo, and both Denver and Pueblo yards employ remotecontrol engines. he BNSF merger is working to the company’s beneit in that traic reaching Colorado from the Missouri River region, or eastward in the opposite direction, can operate over the former BN through Nebraska or the former Santa Fe across Kansas, depending which route has available capacity or crews. For instance, symbol freight KCKDEN can come through Nebraska or Kansas; in the latter case, infrequently it can run La Junta to Trinidad and then turn northward to Denver. he train has also been known to run from Kansas City to Amarillo on the transcontinental main line and then run with the coal empties from Amarillo to Denver. Other Joint Line activity includes oil trains moving from Wyoming or eastern Colorado to Los Angeles or Port Arthur, Texas; occasional sulfur trains from Wyoming to Texas’ Gulf Coast; empty doublestack container and bare-table trains in no hurry to get repositioned to Kansas City or beyond; BNSF’s local to Kelker; an occasional UP rock train north to Drennen/ Kelker; and, because they are produced in northeast Colorado, frequent windmill trains and their heavy turbines. Don’t forget the U.S. Army’s extensive Fort Carson just outside Colorado Springs, which loads numerous military trains. When I was an engineer, don’t ask me how many of them ran on Christmas Day. I grumbled to myself, www.TrainsMag.com
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A coal train heads south on the Joint Line while an RTD light rail train heads north in Littleton, Colo., on Aug. 20, 2013. The light rail line, which opened in 2000, parallels the Joint Line for 9 miles. Michael S. Murray
With UP’s Missouri Pacific heritage unit in the lead, a train of wind turbine blades bound for Wichita Falls, Texas, passes through Spruce on July 26, 2014. Chip Sherman
why can’t they ship their toys any other day? Perhaps you wonder, what was the largest load moved over the Joint Line? Without doubt, it was a hydrotreater reactor weighing 628 tons and carried on a Schnabel railcar, which itself weighs 370 tons empty and has 18 axles at each end. he reactor was manufactured in Italy, shipped to Houston and hauled over former Santa Fe lines at not more than 15 mph, destined for Suncor Reinery in Commerce City, north of Denver. It arrived April 15, 2005.
THE FUTURE To the delight of Front Range city dwellers and their mayors, a north-south coal route in eastern Colorado (described in the Colorado Department of Transportation’s “Colorado Rail Relocation Implementation Study”) has been on the drawing board for nearly two decades, proposing a bypass east in the prairies. But with changing coal demands and haulage, UP is more interested 50
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in an east-west bypass than BNSF’s desire for a north-south one, causing CDOT to back away and consider the project inactive. Passenger advocates have long wished for a high speed rail line to whisk passengers from Pueblo to Denver, Fort Collins, and Cheyenne and Casper, Wyo. But where would those billions of dollars come from? Like sugarplums dancing in the heads of children at Christmas, there are thoughts portions of the old Joint Line could become commuter light rail routes. While that hasn’t exactly been the case in Denver, the Joint Line did receive a new neighbor, a 9-mile Denver Regional Transportation District light rail line paralleling its route from South Denver to Mineral Avenue in Littleton, Colo., on July 14, 2000. he UP and BNSF tracks passed through Littleton in a trench to eliminate grade crossings that opened Oct. 16, 1987, and RTD joined them there. Rio Grande’s old stone depot sits at original grade level and serves the commuters.
As 2015 came to a close, BNSF had nearly 5,000 employees furloughed, while UP reported 3,900. Younger BNSF employees unable to hold a job on the Joint Line may exercise their seniority wherever they can on the railroad. UP’s furloughs are particularly tough in Colorado. he railroad further states it has 1,000 locomotives stored. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a record number of coal-ired power plants closed in 2015, switching to natural gas. But America still used 773 million tons of coal for 34 percent of its power and expects that to remain steady in 2016. Natural gas accounted for 31 percent. If the igures remain stable, Powder River coal will continue moving down the Joint Line even though transporting it costs more than the coal itself. If you study a BNSF system map, the Joint Line is its bull’s-eye center. So many other commodities besides coal move from the top-tier states to the Gulf region — such as grain, lumber, ethanol, and oil — and if they don’t ride the Joint Line, they route through Kansas City or Stockton, Calif. Frac sand and chemicals move north. Given that the Joint Line is the dead center of Warren Bufett’s railroad, it acts as a relief valve for sudden BNSF reroutes to keep trains moving and not held in yards. Since it doesn’t even take Scrooge’s Christmas Day of, you can believe it’s going to be around for a long while, bottleneck and all.
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Colorado’s
GOLDEN AGE of railroading
You’ll find it at the Colorado Railroad Museum by Jeff Terry AT THE COLORADO RAILROAD MUSEUM, located 20 minutes west of downtown Denver in the former gold rush mining town of Golden, you won’t ind rows of immaculate locomotives inside a sterile building or dusty artifacts clogging display cases. hat’s because the museum isn’t a graveyard for unwanted railroad stuf. Many of the trains at Golden still run, having been returned to service ater years of meticulous restoration, and they’re big, loud, and gritty, much to the delight of visitors. “here is something about a train that evokes adventure and nostalgia for that golden age of railroading; we have an ideal setting to experience it,” says Don Tallman, executive director for the past 10 years. At the base of North Table Mountain, not far from the famous Coors Brewery, you’ll ind more than 100 locomotives and 52
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railcars on exhibit, surrounded by an accurate reproduction of an 1890s-vintage narrow gauge railroad that’s complete in every detail, right down to the water tower, roundhouse, and turntable. Between January and October, on Ride the Rails Saturdays, visitors can take a short trip behind diesels or aboard one of the museum’s three Galloping Goose motor cars. During special events, the museum ires up the crown jewel of its collection, 135-year-old steam locomotive No. 346, which brings with it all the sights, sounds, and smells of old-time steam railroading.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS What you see at the museum didn’t happen overnight; it’s taken ive decades to transform a 15-acre cornield in the Denver suburbs into a world-class railroad museum.
he museum’s roots go back to 1948 when Robert W. Richardson, an Ohio railfan, moved west to document the inal years of the Colorado narrow gauge; to support his hobby, he opened a motel just south of Alamosa. Unfortunately, by the mid-1950s the quaint 3-foot gauge lines that crisscrossed the Rocky Mountains were rapidly dying of. Richardson judiciously reported their demise in his popular Narrow Gauge News. Dismayed at what was happening, and not content to just take photographs, he began collecting equipment. In 1950, ater much diiculty, Richardson purchased Baldwin-built 2-8-0 No. 346 from the Denver & Rio Grande Western, along with a wooden caboose and Rio Grande Southern Galloping Goose No. 2, one of the unique motor cars RGS constructed during the Great Depression.
Symbol of a museum’s success, Denver & Rio Grande Western 2-8-0 No. 346 sprints on the Colorado Railroad Museum loop. The Baldwin product of 1881 is the oldest operating steam locomotive in the state of Colorado. Jef f Terr y
Needing a suitable home to showcase his newly found treasures, he established the Narrow Gauge Museum on motel property in 1953. He allowed the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club to display recently acquired RGS 4-6-0 No. 20 and D&RGW 2-8-0 No. 318, which was preserved in 1954 by Cornelius W. Hauck at Richardson’s urging. he equipment quickly outgrew the site in Alamosa, leading to a move in 1958 to a larger museum site in Golden, an old farmstead chosen because of its close proximity to Denver. here, Richardson and Hauck built a new motel, erected a replica depot humorously named “Delay Junction,” and opened the museum to the public in 1959. “Like many railroad museums around the country, the Colorado Railroad Museum was founded by rail-
road enthusiasts interested in preserving railroad history,” Tallman says. “he founders ran the museum and dedicated volunteers helped maintain and restore the railroad equipment and other artifacts.” Unfortunately the museum and restoration eforts lost money from the start, and in 1964 Hauck and Richardson turned the collection over to the nonproit Colorado Railroad Historical Foundation, which was created to oversee its continued preservation. “Uncle Bob,” as Richardson was afectionately known, stayed on as executive director.
GROWING THE COLLECTION From the 1960s through the 1980s the museum concentrated its eforts on acquiring artifacts, especially locomotives and rolling stock with ties to Colorado. With
D&RGW and RGS well represented, the focus was expanded to include examples of equipment from other 3-foot-gauge roads, including Florence & Cripple Creek, Uintah Railway, and Colorado & Southern (the tracks of its predecessor, Colorado Central, passed within a few hundred feet of the museum’s front door). Today, nearly half the collection is comprised of narrow gauge locomotives and cars, the oldest dating to the 1870s. Visitor favorites include bright red D&RG “bobber” caboose No. 49 (one of eight cabooses at the museum); D&RGW coach No. 284, which has been meticulous restored to its 1930s appearance; and Colorado & Northwestern 2-8-0 No. 30, later RGS No. 74, on loan from the City of Boulder. One of the most signiicant acquisitions was that of 1880 Baldwin-built locomotive www.TrainsMag.com
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Colorado Railroad Museum founder Bob Richardson moves a three-way switch at the Narrow Gauge Museum south of Alamosa, Colo., in the mid-1950s. This was the initial gathering point for the nucleus of the collection before it moved to Golden in 1958. The Mears Junction sign is from the place where the Marshall Pass and Valley narrow gauge lines joined, named for railroad builder Otto Mears. Mallor y Hope Ferrell
Rolling stock of the fledgling Colorado Railroad Museum huddles on a few tracks in Golden, Colo. In addition to a Galloping Goose, Nos. 318, 346, and 191 are visible along with Burlington Route 4-8-4 No. 5629. Across the street is the Coors brewery. TR A I NS collection
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No. 191, a survivor of the legendary Denver, South Park & Paciic and currently the oldest authentic Colorado locomotive in the state. Richardson discovered the engine at a museum in Rhinelander, Wis., which had received it in the 1930s from a local logging railroad. It took several years, but Richardson inally brought No. 191 home in 1973 ater a complicated trade that included the acquisition of another logging locomotive (found in Mexico) for Rhinelander. Today, ater years of restoration, No. 191 is a showpiece at the museum. Tallman says the demise of Colorado’s narrow gauge railroads gave Richardson and Hauck numerous opportunities to collect not only railcars, but corporate records and objects which have proven immensely valuable to historians. heir single biggest acquisition was the complete operating records of the Rio Grande Southern, several tons of paper which illed up two boxcars. “Instead of being trashed, [the archives] became a treasure trove of primary material for our library and artifact collection,” he says.
One of the most significant acquisitions was Denver, South Park & Pacific 2-8-0 No. 191, an 1880 Baldwin that had wandered to Wisconsin when it was found and returned to Colorado. Jef f Terr y
In the early 1960s the museum began adding standard gauge equipment, representing another important era in Colorado railroad history. One of the most soughtater pieces was the last surviving standard gauge D&RGW steam locomotive, 2-8-0 No. 683, which arrived in 1963 from the Southern San Luis Valley short line. Today it’s dwarfed by the largest locomotive on the grounds, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 4-8-4 No. 5629, one of the Burlington’s celebrated O5-class Northerns that romped across the prairies east of Denver. Other notable standard gauge pieces include a wooden Colorado Midland observation car; tail car Navajo from Santa Fe’s Super Chief; and a 0-4-2T cog locomotive that once ran up and down Colorado’s most famous mountain, Pikes Peak.
A REBIRTH By the late 1980s the museum was beginning to stagnate, as little was being done to maintain public interest or encourage repeat visits. “[Robert Richardson’s] vision
The largest locomotive in the collection is Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 4-8-4 No. 5629, an O5-class Northern that once burned up the main line east of Denver. TR A I NS : Tom Danneman
for the museum was a small museum with an important collection of Colorado narrow gauge equipment that was targeted to the railfan community; it was run more like a railroad club,” Tallman says. “Over time, we realized that in order to be a good steward to our collections we had to become more museum-like. “ Richardson retired in 1991 (he passed away in 2007), just as the museum began a period of signiicant expansion and growth. To house the ever-growing collection of maps, books, and periodicals, the aptly named Robert W. Richardson Railroad Library was built in 1997. Even more signiicant, the former motel property was purchased, and where it stood the museum erected a ive-stall roundhouse complete with functioning Armstrong dual-gauge turntable. his restoration facility, the Cornelius W. Hauck Roundhouse, allows for year-round maintenance and shelters the most fragile pieces; before its construction all repair work had to be done outdoors. Additionally, for
the irst time in its history the museum undertook the cosmetic restoration of a diesel locomotive, D&RGW F9A No. 5771, which had closed out regular passenger service in 1983 at the head of D&RGW’s Denver-Salt Lake City Rio Grande Zephyr. Together with F9B No. 5762, it was the irst major artifact at the museum to depict the poststeam era of Colorado railroading. Changes continued when Tallman was hired as executive director in 2006, the irst non-railfan at the throttle. What he lacked in railroad expertise, he ofset with historic preservation knowledge. “I had a full quiver of non- and for-proit skills and experiences, and knew that if we were going to grow and be relevant going forward we had to change the way we looked at our collection,” he says. “We had to become less equipment-centric and more focused on why the equipment is important, where and how it was used, what role it had in transforming Colorado and the nation, and how it informs the stories of the people who worked and rode on the railroads in [our State].” www.TrainsMag.com
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Rio Grande No. 346 rides a dual gauge turntable. The five-stall roundhouse enables the museum to perform restoration and maintenance inside, a vital ingredient to any museum. At the far right is the museum’s Rio Grande GP30, awaiting work. Jef f Terr y
The museum performed a cosmetic restoration on Rio Grande F9A No. 5771 and F9B No. 5726, which had closed out the era of privately operated passenger trains in 1983 at the head of the railroad’s Denver-Salt Lake City Rio Grande Zephyr. TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt
Unlike when the Colorado Railroad Museum opened in 1959, today many people have never seen a steam locomotive or ridden on a train. “We’ve found that one of the most powerful ways to introduce people to railroading is through the train-ride experience, when we run one of our historic steam locomotives pulling an 1880s passenger coach, or the Galloping Goose,” Tallman says. he experience, he says, is akin to “being able to step 100 years back in time.” 56
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Train rides have been ofered since 1962, when repairs were made to No. 346, allowing it to steam again ater nearly two decades. Once or twice a year the Consolidation would be ired up for trips over a short length of track co-founder Richardson dubbed the “Golden City & San Juan,” which was spiked down around static exhibits. “he overall layout of the museum grew organically without a real plan,” Tallman says. “Equipment would be purchased or
donated and a section of track was built wherever there was space available to display it. Eventually, as equipment was restored back to service, a semicircle of track was constructed allowing the equipment to be run forward and backward.” With the acquisition of the motel property, a full circle of track, the Alexis & Irene McKinney Loop, was completed in 1999; additionally, the operating schedule was expanded with trains running nearly every Saturday instead of just a few times a year. he loop, which sports grades of 4 percent, gives the locomotives a real workout and provides visitors the opportunity to view equipment up close while in operation. Tallman calls the museum’s demonstration railroad “a photographer’s dream,” because fans can take pictures from multiple vantage points on the museum grounds.
CONTINUED GROWTH It takes a great deal of efort to maintain the operating leet in top condition; keeping displayed equipment painted and looking good is another never-ending task. To complicate matters, locomotives and cars placed on static display in the early years were oten isolated from live trackage,
The museum’s
OPERATING RELICS
A flock of geese: Visiting and museum-owned Rio Grande Southern Galloping Goose motorcars pose in front of the Golden roundhouse during a special event. Br yan Bechtold
IF YOU’VE VIEWED A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE sitting cold inside a museum, you know that there’s no substitute for a live engine — the smell of coal smoke and hot oil; the heat from the fire; the sounds of the air compressor and whistle. That’s what the Colorado Railroad Museum is all about — reliving the glory days of railroads in the Centennial State for those in the 21st century. All locomotives and motor cars in the operating fleet are 3-foot gauge. Let’s take a closer look. • No. 346, 2-8-0, Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1881. The museum’s signature locomotive, class C-19 No. 346 was originally Denver & Rio Grande No. 406 and named Cumbres. Renumbered in 1924, it operated on every major narrow gauge railroad in Colorado, including the Rio Grande Southern and the Colorado & Southern, and also served the Montezuma Lumber Co., near Dolores, the state’s last logger. It operates several times each year and is currently restored to its 193637 appearance when it was leased to the C&S, complete with a Ridgeway Spark Arrestor (“Bear Trap” smokestack cinder catcher). It carries the name Robert W. Richardson in honor of its savior and museum co-founder.
making even simple repairs diicult. “Several years ago we began the process of connecting almost all of our stationary track,” Tallman explains, “which allowed us not only to change our rolling stock exhibits, but more importantly made it possible to more easily and cost-efectively move our [display] equipment into the roundhouse for maintenance and restoration. It has been a game changer for us.” Tallman has led the museum through an era of progress. During 2008, Union Paciic 0-6-0 No. 4455 and C&S Rotary snow plow No. 99201, which had languished in storage since their donation in the early 1970s, were relocated to the grounds and refurbished with new paint and lettering. Locomotive No. 318, which had briely operated at the museum in 1978-79 before being dismantled for repair work that was found too costly to inish, was cosmetically
• No. 491, 2-8-2, D&RGW Burnham Shops (Denver), 1928. Currently the largest operating narrow gauge locomotive in the west, No. 491 started life in 1902 as a standard gauge 2-8-0, D&RG No. 1126. When Rio Grande needed additional locomotives for its narrow gauge lines, Burnham Shops in Denver rebuilt 10 standard gauge engines between 1928 and 1930 into narrow gauge 2-8-2s, retaining their boilers, tenders, and frames and adding new wheels. Classed as a K-37, No. 491 operated in heavy freight service on D&RGW until 1963 when it was retired and stored in Alamosa. Restored to service in 2014, it has been repainted to its 1928 appearance of glossy black with green boiler jacketing. • Peewee No. 3, gas-mechanical, Plymouth, 1948. Longtime switcher at the museum, Peewee arrived in 1965 after being retired by United States Gypsum; it’s still used to move rail cars and locomotives, but rarely pulls passenger trains. It sports the herald of fictional Golden City & San Juan, which was Robert Richardson’s pet name for the museum’s demonstration railroad. • No. 50, 30-ton gas-mechanical, Davenport-Besler, 1937. Originally built for Oregon’s Sumpter Valley Railroad, this 160-hp unit was acquired by the Rio Grande in 1963 and was used as the Durango, Colo., yard switcher. After a brief second career in California, it was acquired by the museum in 1984 and was returned to operation in 2009. • Galloping Goose motorcars. Rio Grande Southern had a fleet of these home-built “motors” that sported Pierce-Arrow bodies; they were used to haul freight and passengers between Durango and Telluride into the early 1950s. Today, the museum owns three of the six survivors. No. 2, completed in 1931, was used in freight service and has been restored with its original freight box, while No. 6, dating from 1934, was used as a work car and is powered by a six-cylinder Chevrolet engine. The newest Goose in the collection, No. 7, was constructed in 1936 as a freight motor but was later converted to passenger service; it’s frequently used for weekend rides. • No. 4, 50-ton diesel-electric, General Electric, 1964. Used for switching, No. 4 initially worked for Algoma Steel before moving on to East Broad Top and Durango & Silverton. Acquired in 2008, it wears GC&SJ reporting marks. Colorado’s railroad museum is very much alive. — Jeff Terry
restored in 2011 ater sitting in pieces for nearly 30 years. Even museum favorite No. 346 received attention beginning in 2001 when it was given a much-needed boiler overhaul and a new stainless steel tender tank to replace its rusted-out original (most people can’t tell the diference — the replica tank is accurate down to the riveted patches and dents copied from the original tank). Before No. 346 returned to service in 2007, the train ride utilized one of three operable steam engines from the Ashby family’s narrow gauge collection, which has been in temporary storage at the museum since 2004. hree years ago volunteers began the monumental task of returning D&RGW 2-8-2 No. 491 to operation, largely because the museum required a steam locomotive more powerful than No. 346 to use during its popular homas the Tank Engine and
Polar Express events. he Mikado, the largest narrow gauge locomotive at Golden, was given to the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado) ater retirement. History Colorado loaned it to the museum for display in 1985 and then donated it outright in 2013. Its restoration was a no-brainer. “It has the best boiler of any of the preserved Rio Grande K-37s,” says museum Chief Mechanical Oicer Jack Campbell. “It also received some [boiler modiications] that others in its class didn’t receive. It’s just in excellent mechanical condition.” Campbell, along with Master Mechanic Mike Spera, led the efort to get No. 491 running again; it irst steamed on the museum loop in 2014. he next major artifact to come back to life will be Rio Grande Southern 4-6-0 No. 20, which has been undergoing extensive repairs at the Strasburg Rail Road’s shop in www.TrainsMag.com
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Former Georgetown Loop 2-8-0 No. 40 and former Rio Grande 2-8-0 No. 318 share space on the display tracks. No. 40 is a 1921 Baldwin built for use in Central America and later operated on the Georgetown Loop. No. 318 is an 1896 Baldwin product. TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt
The Colorado Railroad Museum is continuing to add to its collection to tell the story of modern railroads. The latest rolling stock addition is Rio Grande SD40T-2 No. 5401, which is stored off site. The collection spans the steam and diesel eras. Mike Danneman
sion programs for all ages, and to continue eastern Pennsylvania; the $1.5 million to demonstrate the ‘coolness’ factor that project was funded in part by a generous comes with railroad history,” he says. he anonymous grant. museum utilizes traditional museum methhe 33-ton Ten-Wheeler was built in ods like interpretive signage and guided 1899 by Schenectady for the Florence & tours to educate visitors, but also OnCell cell Cripple Creek and was named the Portland. phone tours and interactive educational It went to work for RGS in 1916, and ater a tools to tell this important story. role in the movie “A Ticket to Tomahawk,” Tallman says that attracting visitors isn’t was retired in 1951. he Rocky Mountain always easy. he museum is loRailroad Club, whose members cated in an area along the Front saved it from scrapping at signifRange that has hundreds of icant expense and brought it to tourist attractions. “We’ve had Golden for display in 1958, doto get pretty sophisticated with nated it to the museum a decade our messaging because we serve ago. “No. 20 came to us in basiso many diferent market segcally worn-out condition from ments. We utilize a full range of years of hard use,” Spera says, advertising channels including “but it will be like brand-new social media, TV, radio, and when it’s done.” With major reDon Tallman print and billboards to increase pairs done, No. 20 is expected to awareness and visibility of museum and return in 2016. drive attendance throughout the year. It has been working; we’ve been listed as one of LOOKING AHEAD Tallman sees a bright future for the mu- the top 10 paid attractions in the Denver metro area for the past nine years.” seum, but one with lots of work ahead. “In Increased attendance and revenue has order to continue our growth and success meant more resources to allocate for profesin the 21st century, we have to continue to sional museum staf, which is supported by grow our attendance through new and the museum’s large cadre of volunteers. changing exhibits that educate and enter“We now have a curator of collections tain, to ofer more experiential and immer58
COLORADO RAILROADS
[and] a curator of education & exhibits,” he says. “We’ve added a volunteer & events coordinator and a development director to help us increase our inancial and volunteer resources. It’s been transformational in terms of how we can support the mission of the museum.” And that mission is expanding. he museum is looking to tell a more complete story — that of modern-day railroading in Colorado — in addition to the steam era. To that end, it acquired diesel locomotives, including an EMD switcher from Coors and two diesels of D&RGW heritage, GP30 No. 3011 and SD40T-2 No. 5401 (the latter currently stored of-site). No. 5401’s signiicance to the collection, Tallman says, is that the museum now has examples of one of the earliest and one of the last Rio Grande locomotives to operate in the state (No. 346 is exactly 99 years older than No. 5401, which was delivered in 1980). Both Rio Grande diesels are in rough shape and will require complete restoration that will likely cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. To support these projects, the museum engages in fundraising activities throughout the year, holding events such as Polar Express and Music in the Railyard, which have signiicantly increased repeat attendance and operating revenues. “Restoration projects are very expensive [because] you can’t run down to the local hardware store for parts. Many components have to be machined or fabricated, and restorations require historic accuracy … so we’ve added numerous events throughout the year that provide revenue streams to fund these important programs.” What does Tallman envision a visit to the museum will be like 25 years from now, ater the last people who experienced the steam era are gone? “I think the fundamentals of the museum experience won’t change signiicantly,” he says. “We will still use our rich collections to tell the story of Colorado [railroads] and ofer an authentic train ride experience.” he challenge, he believes, will be to engage a new generation in this important story. “Generation X and Millennials don’t remember the golden age of railroading and live in a diferent world from those who do. hey do remember homas, Polar Express, and other literary train stories that are made more real when they see actual steam and diesel locomotives at the museum. Our job over the next 10 to 25 years is to connect with these new generations through real experiences.” He sees this being done by incorporating additional exhibits and programs into the mix, while maintaining a careful balance between web technologies and real experiences with actual trains. “he museum is based on its phenomenal collection and the stories it tells, and that won’t change.”
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“A monumental work! Silver Rails is a visual and factual feast, long overdue, that ills a void in the history of Colorado standard and narrow gauge railroading… Books of this quality are all too rare these days.” + Bob Schoppe, President, Denver South Park & Paciic Historical Society Preview the Table of Contents, download a FREE preview chapter and order your copy today at
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# Denver & Rio Grande + Denver Leadville & Gunnison + Colorado Midland #
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59
ROYALTY on rails
The gorge(ous) tourist route on the Rio Grande by Mike Danneman 60
AS GEN. WILLIAM JACKSON PALMER advanced his
newly founded Denver & Rio Grande out of Denver in 1871, it headed south with sights aimed on Mexico. By the time the ledgling 3-foot narrow gauge railroad arrived in Pueblo a year later, he was also lured by the great mineral wealth of the Rocky Mountains. He set forth his construc-
COLORADO RAILROADS
tion eforts in two directions only to ind an aggressive Santa Fe Railway already occupying Raton Pass and building a railroad through a narrow deile along the Arkansas River later known as the Royal Gorge. With only enough room in the gorge for one railroad, a bitter dispute with the Santa Fe ensued, with most of the true battling going on in the legal
system. A inal decision by the courts gave Santa Fe the route over Raton, while Rio Grande acquired the route west through the gorge, forever changing Palmer’s dream destination of Mexico. Besides the boom-and-bust mining camps reached by Palmer’s expanding empire, the railroad began the slow process of converting certain narrow
A Royal Gorge Route excursion train, left, enters the canyon. Mike Above right, the Rio Grande passenger train named Royal Gorge pauses for 10 minutes of sightseeing at the bottom of the chasm in the 1960s. W.A. Peters Right, from the bridge we see the Rio Grande passenger train in its namesake gorge. Bob Borcherding
Danneman
gauge routes to standard gauge. his included the route through Royal Gorge and over Tennessee Pass, creating a circuitous main line of 745 miles between Denver and Salt Lake City. Eventually, as the railroad
matured, it began to focus on bridge traic. Even though the mileage between the two cities was shortened by 175 miles with the opening of the Mofat Tunnel (page 30), the Royal Gorge route was still used to
WHERE RAILROADING RUNS DEEP
Parkdale 50
3A
Roy al G o (RR rge Ro RR) ute Ark ans as Riv er
3A
Royal Gorge Park D&RGW 2-8-2 No. 499 displayed; Royal Gorge Inclined Ry.; Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge; aerial tramway
N
Hanging Bridge
Former D&RGW depot
MP 159
50
SP WSL 0
Santa Fe Built as Pueblo & Arkansas Valley (ATSF) NG 1879; to D&RG 1880; 3R 1888; SG 1911; to SP 1988; to UP 1996; to CCRG 1998 Rock & Rail (Royal Gorge freight provider); 50% owner Southern Pacific West Side Lumber
E RG GO
RRRR
L YA RO
ATSF CCRG
D&RG Grape Creek Branch (1881-1890)
Scale
5 miles
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Bill Metzger
CAÑON CITY
CCRG depot, former ATSF depot; WSL Shay No. 8 displayed
RRRR
UP
ATSF (1876-1998)
RRRR (ATSF) Cotter Branch SG Built 1958
One of the great thrills of riding the Royal Gorge Route is standing in an open-top car and enjoying the canyon walls and the rushing Arkansas River just a few feet away. There’s barely enough room for the river and the railroad here, and the famous hanging bridge is testament to that. Two photos, Mike Danneman
interchange with railroads east of Pueblo. But mergers have a way of changing things, and when Union Paciic acquired Western Paciic and Missouri Paciic in 1982, Rio Grande found one less friendly connection from each end. he loss of the MP at Pueblo was sotened by the railroad’s expansion to Kansas City on trackage rights. But to the west, the railroad was let with only one dance partner, Southern Paciic. Fortunately, the route through Royal Gorge hummed 62
with traic as it was an integral part of SP’s “central corridor.” However, when UP bought the combined Rio Grande/SP, the route was declared redundant as UP didn’t need another passage east to Kansas City. he rails over Tennessee Pass went silent ater the last through train operated in August 1997. Just before discontinuing service on the line, UP operated a passenger train pulled by its celebrated 4-8-4 No. 844 through the Royal Gorge and over Tennessee Pass on a multiday Denver-Salt Lake City trip.
COLORADO RAILROADS
Many thought this might be the last time they could ride the line that hadn’t seen a regular passenger train since the Royal Gorge was discontinued in 1967. Certainly this could have been a correct assumption, but a bright spot on the horizon was the scenic trackage through what was once known as “the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas.” In 1999, the Cañon City & Royal Gorge (later changed to Royal Gorge Route Railroad) began operations on 12 miles of trackage through rugged Royal Gorge west of Cañon City.
It is one of the deepest canyons in Colorado with a depth of 1,250 feet in places, and is made even more remarkable by its narrow conines — 50 feet at the base, working out to a few hundred at its top. Over millions of years, waters from what is now the Arkansas River cut through a granite uplit to form the incredible crevasse we now know as the Royal Gorge. here are several excellent ways to see the scenic wonder. Driving or walking across the 1929-built, 955-foot-high Royal Gorge Bridge, a keystone of Cañon City’s Royal Gorge Park, is a great way to see into the chasm. Or a seasonal rating trip over the turbulent waters of the foaming Arkansas can get you a good, but perhaps wet, look at the canyon from below. But the best way to view the spectacular scenery is a trip on a Royal Gorge Route passenger train. he trip begins and ends in Cañon City at the tidy former Santa Fe depot, harking back to when Santa Fe still operated a branch to town. Royal Gorge Route Railroad’s passenger train sits out front on the former mainline rails purchased from UP in 1999. When the railroad began it had ive former VIA coaches and two ex-Chicago & North Western F7s acquired from UP. Today, this roster has expanded to ive locomotives and 17 cars, most painted in a deep orange and silver Rio Grande-inspired paint scheme that is most apropos for the line. More recently, several full-dome cars purchased from Alaska have expanded the amenities ofered. Once the train departs the depot and passes through the western portion of Cañon City, the walls of the canyon begin to climb on both sides of the river. On the 12-mile trip to the “end of the line” at Parkdale siding just west of the canyon, the railroad passes the former railroad siding locations of Burnito, Gorge, Sample, and Fink. You’ll note that the train is still governed by trackside signals — interestingly, even though the track is owned by Royal Gorge
Painted to mimic Rio Grande’s famous scheme, Royal Gorge Route locomotives and cars offer a bright contrast to the surrounding canyon. The rolling stock fleet consists of five locomotives and 17 passenger cars, including several full-length domes. Michael T. Burkhar t
Route Railroad, trains are still dispatched by Union Paciic using radio and signal indications. West of Gorge, and at one of the narrowest portions of the canyon, is a unique railroad bridge. Originally designed and constructed by Santa Fe, the Hanging Bridge was built in 1879 for $12,000, and traverses a portion of the river along a particularly sheer granite wall in the gorge. he crossing consists of a 175-foot plate girder bridge supported on one side with two A-frame girders that span the river and are anchored to rock walls. As the years passed and freight trains got bigger and heavier, the bridge has been strengthened, but it is still a remarkable piece of engineering. And much too oten, people have confused the “Hanging Bridge” they are riding over with the high suspension bridge directly overhead at this location. Watch for both!
he leisurely 24-mile round trip takes about 2 hours rolling along the curvy, rocky banks of the Arkansas. he trip back to Cañon City allows you to take note of anything you missed on the way out. Owned and operated by a Colorado family since its inception, the line has become a popular destination carrying more than 100,000 passengers a year. Combining great scenery with the nostalgia of train travel, the Royal Gorge Route Railroad features several diferent classes of service, including coach, club, and Vista-Dome. Also ofered are lunch and dinner trains that are a great way to enjoy a meal and view the beautiful canyon scenery. On certain morning departures, a hearty breakfast can also be purchased. For a unique view of the railroad through the canyon, you can also purchase a cab ride from Cañon City to Park-
dale, returning to Cañon City in reserved Vista-Dome seating. hroughout the year, the railroad operates specials, such as Murder Mystery trains, Santa Express trains, and the popular Polar Express. No matter what class of seating you decide to purchase, for my money, the best view in the house is from one of the open cars, available to any ticket holders. It’s like riding in a vestibule with an open dutch door, but without the vestibule. Riding the Royal Gorge Route Railroad’s passenger train can take you back to another time, satisfy you with a good meal, or simply show you what nature has to ofer inside a striking canyon. Even though the rails of storied Tennessee Pass remain rusty, with freight traic unlikely to ever come back, at least you can still ride and experience a 12-mile portion of the scenic route through the Royal Gorge.
A Royal Gorge Route train poses beneath the highest bridge in the U.S., the Royal Gorge suspension bridge, 955 feet above the tracks. www.TrainsMag.com
63
for Denver
F
ew cities in North America have shown the chutzpah of Denver when it comes to rail transit. But observers should expect nothing less from the city that once proclaimed “mizpah” — Hebrew for the bond between separated people — at the entrance to its main passenger station. hat facility, Denver Union Station, is 64
COLORADO RAILROADS
the centerpiece of the region’s multi-billiondollar FasTracks transportation project (see page 18). he unprecedented expansion came about thanks to a 2004 ballot initiative supported by 58 percent of voters. Its passage brought about the unique publicprivate partnership, simply referred to as “P3” in the region. hat entity will build and manage the new infrastructure on behalf of the Regional Transportation District, which was organized in 1969. By year’s end, the Denver region, home to 2.87 million people in the agency’s service
area, will boast almost 60 miles of light rail routes and 36 miles of new commuter rail routes. hat will place it among the premier cities for rail transit in the U.S. To date, the region has spent about $5.6 billion on FasTracks. For their money, taxpayers will get a mix of transportation infrastructure, including light rail expansion and bus rapid transit, as well as an entirely new commuter rail system built largely from scratch. hat includes a irst-for-the-region rail link to Denver International Airport, providing a one-seat
RTD gets a big boost in 2016 by Brian Schmidt
ride to downtown Denver. hrough the end of 2016, RTD expects to open two more new commuter rail lines and a light rail extension. he FasTracks program includes the “Eagle P3” project, comprised of the design, building, inancing, operation, and maintenance of the new A, B, and G commuter rail lines to Denver International Airport, Westminster and Wheat Ridge, as well as the new downtown commuter rail maintenance facility. Denver Transit Partners, a consortium of engineering and construction irms, won
the contract in July 2010. Funding for the project comes from federal grants and loans, RTD sales-tax revenues, and the contractor’s inancial contribution. he FasTracks project also received a $1.03 billion grant from the Federal Transit Administration. A signiicant highlight of the FasTracks project is the development of the region’s skilled labor force. he ailiated Workforce Initiative Now is a partnership between the agency, Community College of Denver, Denver Transit Partners, and
Leaving Denver International Airport, an eight-car test train crosses Peña Boulevard, the main route to the airport, in October 2015. The RTD airport line is expected to open April 22, 2016. Br yan Bechtold
Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. he project has aligned a network of more than 60 local programs ofering training and provided more than 1,300 residents with outreach services, according to Program Manager Martell Dyles. One challenge faced by the partnership was the reconiguration of Denver Union Station to accommodate commuter rail. Continued on page 68 www.TrainsMag.com
65
66
COLORADO RAILROADS
Boulder Junction B
Flatiron B
Louisville B
B Line extension planned to operate on trackage shared with BNSF freights to Longmont.
Gunbarrel B
$2.60 $5.20 $99.00
One way Day pass Monthly pass $171.00
$9.00
$4.50
Regional
Included in Regional pass
Included in Regional pass
$9.00
Airport
US36/Sheridan B
Church Ranch B
N Line opens 2018
Northglenn/112th N
Eastlake/124th N
York/144th N
Wheat Ridge/Ward G
Auraria West Campus C E W
BNSF locomotive shop
RTD sold the naming rights for the A Line to the University of Colorado.
10th/Osage C D E F H
Scale
1⁄4
mile
N
Denver Airport A
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co. TRAINS: Rick Johnson Not all lines shown
0
Theatre District/Convention Center D F H
20th St./Welton D 18th St./California D F H 16th St./California D F H
Colfax at Auraria D F H
30th/Downing D L
33rd/Downing L
35th/Downing L
38th/Blake A L
29th St./Welton D 27th St./Welton D 25th St./Welton D
UP 36th Street Yard
48th & Brighton/National N Western Center
BNSF 31st Street Yard
Union Station A B C E G N W
18th St./Stout D F H 16th St./Stout D F H Sports Authority Field at Mile High C E W
Thornton Crossroads/104th N
Original Thornton/88th N
41st/Fox G
BNSF Rennick Yard
Pepsi Center/ Elitch Gardens C E W
N Line to be built on former UP right-of-way to Thornton.
North Thornton/Hwy 7 N
Discounts are available for 10-ride ticket book and five pack of day passes.
Local
Fares
rail network
DENVER RTD
Downtown Longmont B
RTD Commuter Rail maintenance facility
UP North Yard
www.TrainsMag.com
67
Denver
C O L O R A D O
Map area
Garrison W Federal Center W
Airport – Union Station (April 2016) Westminster – Union Station (summer 2016) Littleton – Union Station Littleton – 18th/Welton Lincoln – Union Station Lincoln – 18th/Welton Wheat Ridge – Union Station (fall 2016) Florida – 18th/Welton 38th/Blake – 30th/Downing (planned) Thornton – Union Station (2018) Lincoln – Peoria (late 2016) Jefferson County Government Center/Golden – Union Station
Lamar W Perry W Decatur-Federal W
Light tinted area represents RTD boundary Not all lines shown
A B C D E F G H L N R W
X Commuter rail routes X Light rail routes
Existing station Planned station
Commuter rail Light rail UP freight BNSF freight Bus lines Under construction Planned expansion
Station A Station A
Red Rocks College W
Jefferson Co. Government/ Golden W
30th/Downing D L
Littleton/Mineral C D
Oxford-City of Sheridan C D
Englewood C D
Evans C D
C470/Lucent C D
Dayton R H
RidgeGate Parkway E F R
Lone Tree City Center E F R
Sky Ridge E F R
Lincoln E F R
County Line E F R
Dry Creek E F R
Scale
5 miles
N
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Rick Johnson
0
R Line to provide south suburban residents with a two-seat ride to the airport without transferring at Union Station.
Iliff R H
Florida R H
Aurora Metro Center R
Arapahoe at Village Center E F R
Orchard E F R
40th Ave. & Airport Blvd/Gateway Park A
61st & Peña A
2nd Ave./Abilene R
Colfax R 13th Ave. R
Nine Mile R H
Fitzsimons R
Belleview E F R
Southmoor E F H
Yale E F H
Colorado E F H
Louisiana/Pearl E F H University of Denver E F H
I-25/Broadway C D E F H
Alameda C D E F H
Theatre District/Convention Center D F H 10th/Osage C D E F H
R Line opens late 2016
Central Park A
Union Station A B C E G N W 18th St./Califiornia D F H
Littleton/Downtown C D
Pepsi Center/Elitch Gardens C E W Sports Authority Field at Mile High C E W Auraria West Campus C E W Lakewood-Wadsworth W Sheridan W Knox W Oak W
University of Colorado A Line opens April 2016 48th & Brighton/National Western Center N 40th/Colorado A Peoria A R 38th/Blake A L
Westminster B Commerce City/72nd N Pecos Junction G
Clear Creek/Federal G Olde Town Arvada G Arvada Ridge G 41st/Fox G Wheat Ridge/Ward G Union Transit Center C E W
G Line opens fall 2016
60th & Sheridan/Arvada Gold Strike G
B Line opens summer 2016
The light rail plaza at Denver Union Station opened in mid-May 2012. Passengers can access the station via underground bus mall and walkway. Michael T. Burkhar t Continued from page 65
“RTD had originally planned for six tracks for commuter rail that were to be placed between the historic station and Wewatta Street,” says RTD Union Station Project Manager Jerry Nery. “he idea came up to split the wide 25-foot platforms in half and place an additional track farther north of the underground bus facility. RTD was able to it eight tracks and their respective platforms in the same space originally designed for six tracks. his provided RTD with future growth potential for commuter rail expansion.” New commuter rail operations are conducted by an entity known as Denver Transit Operators, the concessionaire that will operate and maintain the commuter rail lines for the next 29 years. hat group will also conduct the labor management for the new system, including hiring of commuter rail crews. As of March 2016, more than 30 people have received training to operate commuter trains. Plans call for a total of 65 operators by the end of the year. Another trait unique to Denver is the sponsorship of rail lines. In late 2015, RTD revealed that the University of Colorado had purchased the naming-rights for the new A Line serving the airport. he agreement extends for ive years and will net the agency $5 million in sponsorship fees. “RTD is working with our naming rights partner to pursue additional agreements,” spokeswoman Deborah Méndez Wilson says. “Other lines in our system are available for naming rights agreements.” Denver launched revenue service on its irst light rail line, linking downtown and Interstate 25 to the south, in 1994. he 5.3mile Central Light Rail line was the nexus for 20-plus years of rail transit expansion. he irst major expansion opened in 2000, with an 8.7-mile extension from I-25/ Broadway south to Mineral Avenue, known 68
COLORADO RAILROADS
as the Southwest Rail Line. he route, which hosts the C and D lines, parallels the BNSF Railway and Union Paciic “Joint Line” south of Denver through the suburbs of Englewood, Sheridan, and Littleton, providing an excellent train-watching experience. A proposed 2.5-mile extension will add 1,000 park-and-ride spaces and bring service into suburban Highlands Ranch. In 2006, the next major rail expansion took place, creating the 15-mile Southeast Rail Line from I-25/Broadway, the southern terminal of the original line, to Lincoln. he agency is proposing a 2.3-mile extension, adding three stations and extending service south into Lone Tree. Up next was the W Line light rail to Lakewood and Golden, adding 12.1 miles, 11 stations, and six park-and-ride facilities to the system in May 2013 — the irst new line under the FasTracks program to open.
A test train departs Denver Union Station, returning to RTD’s Commuter Rail Maintenance Facility in October 2015. That facility is located beside BNSF’s Rennick Intermodal Yard and UP’s North Yard. Br yan Bechtold
In 2015, average weekday ridership for the existing six-line light rail system was 82,000. hrough the end of 2016, RTD will open four new rail lines. he irst — and arguably most anticipated — will link Union Station with Denver International Airport in April. It will run virtually around the clock, with trains every 15 minutes during the day and evenings, and every 30 minutes overnight. East of downtown Denver, the line will share a right-of-way with the UP’s main line to Kansas City, Mo., past the site of the city’s former Stapleton International Airport, which closed in 1995. Average weekday ridership on the airport line is expected to top 18,000 by the end of the year, and reach more than 34,000 by 2035. he second line, the “B Line” northwest to Westminster, will open in summer 2016. he 6.2-mile route will share a right-of-way with BNSF. In the future, when the full 41mile line to Longmont is completed, RTD commuter trains will even share tracks with freight trains. Up next will be the “G Line” west to Arvada and Wheat Ridge, opening in fall 2016. he 11-mile line will share its route with the B Line as far as Pecos Junction and provide a public transportation alternative to Interstate 70. It will also share a right-of-way with BNSF’s branch to Golden, serving the famed Coors brewery. Manufacturer Hyundai Rotem is working to complete the agency’s leet of new commuter rail vehicles — 66 cars in 33 married pairs. he cars are delivered, by rail via BNSF and CSX Transportation, from the Philadelphia-area plant where they are assembled using steel carbodies shipped from South Korea. hey are equipped with 91 seats and have a capacity of 232 passengers including standees. he cars develop 620 hp each from the 25,000-volts A.C. overhead power system. he inal link in the agency’s 2016 expansion is the 10.5-mile “R Line” light rail extension, opening in late 2016. he new line extends from Nine Mile north through Aurora to a connection with the A Line at Peoria. Once open, it will provide a twoseat ride from Lone Tree, the existing Southeast Rail Line terminal, to the airport without traveling through downtown Denver and connecting at Union Station. Looking to the future, the agency expects to open the irst 13 miles of the 18.5mile N Line in 2018. he route, which is already under construction, is built on the right-of-way of a former UP line to hornton and roughly follows Interstate 25 north of downtown Denver. his project will further expand Denver-area commuters’ options and solidify the region’s reputation as a new leader in public transportation.
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Land of Sunshine Fresh Air and Fond Memories Served Daily
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69
10 COLORADO ATTRACTIONS you shouldn’t miss by Jeff Terry
A rotary snow plow and one of eight Big Boy locomotives left in existence reside in Denver’s Forney Museum of Transportation. Jef f Terr y
1
Take the train from Cripple Creek
Transportation Technology Center, is also the home of the Pueblo Railroad Museum. There are dozens of locomotives and cars on exhibit, including a Santa Fe 4-8-4 and one of the last remaining General Electric U30C U-boats. Not to be missed are three experimental rocket-powered railroad vehicles once put through their paces at the AAR’s test track. Hours vary; free admission; www.pueblorailway.org
Three photos, Jef f Terr y
Railroads arrived in the mining town of Cripple Creek in 1893, and today the best way to see the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp” is aboard Colorado’s only 2-foot gauge steam railroad, the Cripple Creek & Victor. Its colorful coalfired locomotives take visitors on a 45-minute trip along the original roadbed of the Florence & Cripple Creek, past abandoned gold mines and mining claims that are part of the Cripple Creek Historic District. The locomotive roster includes engines of both American and German manufacture, including a rare 0-4-4-0 compound Mallet that once worked in Mexico. May through October, train departs every 45 minutes; admission fee; www. cripplecreekrailroad.com
2
Ride a vintage streetcar in Fort Collins
Car No. 21 of the Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society is a fully restored Birney Safety car that operated until 1951 on one of the last streetcar lines in Colorado. Built in 1919, it was extensively restored by volunteers over a seven-year period. On summer weekends, passengers may climb aboard No. 21 at Fort Collins City Park for a 3-mile trip along a segment of the original railway that traverses tree-lined Mountain Avenue through the city. May-September, weekends, Noon–5 p.m.; admission fee; www.fortcollinstrolley.org/ welcome.html
3
Discover Space Age railroading at Pueblo
Pueblo, location of the Association of American Railroads’
4
Stroll through the Old West at Fairplay
History buffs will find a lot to like at South Park City, a restored 1880s mining town located in Fairplay, 85 miles southwest of Denver. Among the collection of restored pioneer buildings is a depot with exhibits related to the Denver, South Park & Pacific. A Porter 2-6-0 locomotive similar to those of the DSP&P is on static display, along with several wooden freight cars from the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge. May 15 to October 15; admission fee; www.fairy-lamp. com/SPCMuseum/South_Park_ City_Main.html
5
Photograph a “Dinky” at Fort Morgan
The Great Western Sugar Co. operated a fleet of industrial 0-4-0T locomotives — workers called them “Dinkies” — at its Colorado sugar factories into the early 1980s, making them among the last U.S. standard gauge steam locomotives to operate in freight service. The last one to be fired up, 0-4-0T No. 2148, is exhibited in a small park located in front of the former GW sugar factory in Fort Morgan, now owned by Western Sugar Cooperative. At nearby Riverside Park is 0-4-0T No. 2176,
and there are also Dinkies on display in Sterling and Ovid. Daily; free admission
6
See a Big Boy up close in Denver
The largest steam locomotives to operate in Colorado were Union Pacific’s legendary 4-8-8-4 Big Boys. No. 4005, built in 1941, is displayed at Denver’s Forney Museum of Transportation along with three additional steam locomotives, a railroad crane, a rotary snow plow, and several passenger cars. The Forney collection includes rare vehicles, tractors, and motorcycles, all of which are exhibited indoors, making Forney a great year-round tourist destination. Daily; admission fee; www. forneymuseum.org
7
Learn about a Galloping Goose in Dolores
TR A I NS : Jim Wrinn
In Dolores, the nonprofit Galloping Goose Historical Society has preserved Rio Grande Southern No. 5, a Depression-era motorcar featuring a Wayne bus body; it was restored in 1998. The society museum, in a replica of the Dolores depot, features displays. Daily May-October (closed Sunday), limited off-season hours; free admission; www.gallopinggoose5.com
8
Visit the railroad park in Breckenridge
In the mountains above Denver, the Breckenridge Heritage Alliance operates the High Line Railroad Park. Its main attraction is Colorado & Southern 2-6-0 No. 9, which dates to 1884, and a rotary snow plow similar to those once
used by the Denver, Leadville & Gunnison. Several wooden freight cars and a caboose are open. Seasonal hours; free admission; www.breckheritage. com/rotary-snowplow-park
9
Bike the Gold Camp Road to Victor
The right-of-way of the abandoned Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway, which linked Colorado Springs and the gold camps at Victor in the 1890s, is now an 8.5-mile unpaved scenic highway, the Gold Camp Road, maintained by the National Park Service. Closed to vehicular traffic, the roadbed is perfect for hikers and bikers, with impressive rock cuts, fills, tunnels, and abandoned mining claims to discover. Seasonal; free admission; www.cospringstrails.com/ hikes/goldcamproad.html
10
Celebrate the RGS at Ridgway
The birthplace of the narrow gauge Rio Grande Southern in 1890 was in the tiny town of Ridgway, at the gateway to the San Juan Mountains 90 miles southeast of Grand Junction. Although Rio Grande Southern abandoned operations in December 1951, its spirit lives on at the Ridgway Railroad Museum. An exhibit building features photographs and models, and outside are several historic narrow gauge cars along with a faithful replica of Rio Grande Southern No. 1, the first of the railroad’s famous “Galloping Goose” motorcars. April–October, daily; free admission; www. ridgwayrailroadmuseum.org www.TrainsMag.com
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Colorado’s
STEAM STARS
Rio Grande Southern Ten-Wheeler No. 20 has been under restoration in Pennsylvania on behalf of the Colorado Railroad Museum. The 1899 Schnectady product is one of two notable steam locomotives set to run again in Colorado in 2016; the other is in nearby Georgetown. CRRM
From 0-4-0Ts to a big 4-8-8-4, Colorado offers a lot of power by Jim Wrinn OF THE 71 STEAM LOCOMOTIVES
preserved in the state of Colorado, 41 are 3-foot gauge locomotives, and of the 41, 19 are operable. hat is a remarkable head count for both the saved and living links to railroad history. hat is the latest census of preserved steam locomotives as compiled by Trains magazine for Colorado Railroads. Colorado is a state rich in steam locomotive treasures, from some of the smallest tank engines (and some of the last in steam) to one of the biggest locomotives ever built. You’ll ind both geared and rod steam. All that is missing today are the massive articulateds that conquered legendary lines such as Tennessee Pass, Mofat, and the Giant’s Ladder. he biggest concentrations of preserved steam locomotives are found in three places: • Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden rosters 15 locomotives. 72
COLORADO RAILROADS
• Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Durango ields eight locomotives in a snug roundhouse. • And Cumbres & Toltec Scenic’s eight locomotives call both endpoints of the railroad, Antonito, Colo., and Chama, N.M., home. What steam locomotive are you most likely to encounter on a visit to the Centennial State? he answer is likely a Rio Grande narrow gauge 2-8-2 Mikado in one of four varieties: K-27, K-28, K-36, or K-37. Nine of the 10 Denver & Rio Grande Western K-36 Mikados, Nos. 480-489, all built in 1925, are still with us (No. 485 fell into a turntable pit and was scrapped during the steam era; No. 483 at Chama, N.M., is the only other one not restored). One each of the K-27 and K-37 engines operate, and two of the K-28s are in steam with a third on display.
If size matters, the Colorado Railroad Museum ofers a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 4-8-4, and Denver’s Forney Museum of Transportation ields one of eight surviving Union Paciic 4-8-8-4 Big Boy locomotives, No. 4005. he Big Boy is tucked inside, so viewing its entirety is diicult, but the bonus is that you can access the cab. Two notable locomotives are expected to return to service in 2016. Rio Grande Southern 4-6-0 No. 20, part of the Colorado Railroad Museum collection, and Georgetown Loop 2-8-0 No. 111 will be up and running ater extensive overhauls only miles apart in the Front Range west of Denver. So, where there are rails that climb in Colorado, there is steam power not far away. Enjoy these survivors of another era and — whether they are running or on display — listen to them speak of days when it was their turn on the main line.
Rio Grande 2-8-0 No. 315 calls Silverton, Colo., home but sometimes strays to visit other preservation railways. In this shot on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic, the 1895 Consolidation exits Rock Tunnel, perched 600 feet above the Toltec Gorge and the Rio de Los Pinos. TR A I N S : Jim Wrinn
COLORADO STEAM LOCOMOTIVES: OPERATIONAL & DISPLAY City Alamosa Alamosa Alamosa Alamosa Alamosa Alamosa Antonito Antonito Antonito Antonito Antonito Antonito Antonito Antonito Black Hawk Breckenridge Cañon City Cañon City Central City Cimmaron Colorado Springs Cripple Creek Cripple Creek Cripple Creek Cripple Creek Denver Denver Denver Denver Durango Durango Durango Durango Durango Durango Durango Durango Fairplay Fort Morgan Fort Morgan Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Golden Gunnison Idaho Springs La Junta Lamar Leadville Manitou Springs Manitou Springs Ovid Pueblo Salida Silver Plume Silver Plume Silverton Silverton Sterling Trinidad
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Location Rio Grande Scenic Railroad Rio Grande Scenic Railroad Rio Grande Scenic Railroad Rio Grande Scenic Railroad Rio Grande Scenic Railroad Cole Park Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Colorado Station Casino High Line Railroad Park Royal Gorge Scenic Railway Royal Gorge Bridge and Park Reserve Hotel and Casino Curecanti National Recreation Area Broadmoor Hotel – El Pomar Carriage Museum Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad Forney Transportation Museum Forney Transportation Museum Forney Transportation Museum Forney Transportation Museum Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad South Park City Museum Western Sugar Cooperative Riverside Park Power Plant Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Railroad Museum Gunnison Pioneer Museum Harold E. Anderson Park U.S. Route 50 and Barnes Avenue Amtrak station Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway Memorial Park City park Pueblo Railway Museum Salida Museum Georgetown Loop Railroad Georgetown Loop Railroad D&SNG Silverton Railroad Museum Durango Railroad Hist. Society (SN enginehouse) City park (water tower) City hall
COLORADO RAILROADS
Type 2-8-0 2-8-0 2-6-0 0-4-0F (fireless) Heisler 2-truck 4-6-0 4-6-0 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-0 2-6-0 Shay 3-truck 2-8-2 2-8-0 2-8-0 0-4-2 (cog) 0-4-0 0-4-4-0 0-4-0T 0-4-4-0T 4-8-8-4 4-6-0 0-4-4T 0-4-0T 2-8-0 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-8-2 2-6-0 0-4-0T 0-4-0T 2-8-0 2-8-0 2-8-2 4-6-0 0-4-0T 2-8-0 4-8-4 0-4-2T (cog) 0-6-0 2-8-0 2-8-0 Shay 3-truck Shay 3-truck 2-8-0 2-8-0 2-8-0 2-8-0 2-6-2 2-6-2 2-8-0 0-4-2T (cog) 0-4-2T (cog) 0-4-0T 4-8-4 0-4-0T Shay 3-truck 2-8-0 2-8-2 2-8-0 0-4-0T 2-8-0
Number 18 20 1744 7 3 169 168 494 495 484 487 488 489 463 71 9 8 499 71 278 5 2 4 3 1 4005 444 108 7 42 473 476 478 480 481 482 486 22 13 2176 346 318 491 20 1 191 5629 1 4455 30 683 12 14 40 44 268 60 1024 1819 641 4 2 2150 2912 40 12 111 493 315 2121 638
Year Built 1910 1910 1901 1941 1917 1888 1888 1928 1928 1925 1925 1925 1925 1903 1911 1884 1922 1930 1897 1882 1901 1948 1946 1927 1902 1941 1906 1897 1930 1887 1923 1923 1923 1925 1925 1925 1925 1914 1928 1930 1881 1896 1928 1899 1920 1880 1940 1890 1920 1898 1890 1927 1916 1921 1921 1882 1886 1901 1906 1906 1897 1890 1929 1944 1926 1923 1926 1928 1895 1928 1906
Gauge Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Standard NG (600mm) Narrow (24”) Narrow (24”) NG (600mm) Standard Standard Narrow (36”) NG (600mm) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Standard Standard Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Standard Narrow (36”) Standard Standard Standard Narrow (36”) Standard Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Narrow (24”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Narrow (36”) Standard Standard
Status Stored serviceable Stored out of service Rebuild Stored out of service Stored serviceable Cosmetic restoration Restoration Display at depot Display at depot Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Display Display Display at depot Display Display Display Display Serviceable Restoration Serviceable Serviceable Display Display Display Display Display in roundhouse Serviceable Display in roundhouse Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Serviceable Display Display Display Serviceable Display Serviceable Restoration Display Display Display Display Display Display Display Stored serviceable Stored serviceable Stored serviceable Stored dismantled Display Display Display Display Display Serviceable Display Display Cosmetic restoration Display Serviceable Restoration Display Serviceable Display Display
BOOK YOUR COLORADO TOUR TODAY
Join us for Rockies by Rail! A 9-day, 8-night escorted tour of the best scenic railroads and museums Departures from Denver May 25 and May 30, 2016
More tours coming in 2017 and 2018! Details coming soon For more information: www.SpecialInterestTours.com or call 727-330-7738
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Photo: Jim Wrinn
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*Price does not include shipping. The Colorado Railroads DVD will arrive in late April 2016.
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A Wild West narrow gauge railroad adventure by Tyler Trahan On Aug. 14, 2015, a Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train, with K-36 No. 486 up front, clings to the cliffs above the Animas River on the “high line” near Rockwood, Colo. TR A I N S : Tom Danneman
On June 18, 1950, the Silverton enters Animas Canyon near Silverton, Colo., once a silver mining camp.
A
vertical climb of 2,900 feet over 45 miles. Five active steam locomotives regularly working at their tonnage rating, each consuming 6 tons of coal and up to 10,000 gallons of water on a round trip. hree trains a day, seven days a week, all summer. Soaring Colorado Rocky Mountain peaks above a clear-running river. You might think you need a time machine to get here, but a plane or car will do — this is the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Today the railroad is one of the premier tourist railroads in the U.S. and famous around the world, but it was once just another mining branch in the Colorado Rockies. Opened under the Denver & Rio Grande Railway in 1882, it joined many of its contemporaries in the “Wild West” as an ambitious infrastructure project built on dubious grounds. Tracks twist 45 miles through the narrow Animas River canyon, while trains climb grades of up to
Durango & Silverton built a replica of a popular Rio Grande glass-top car, Silver Vista, that operated on the Silverton branch in the late 1940s and early 1950s before it was lost to fire. TR A I NS : Jim Wrinn
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R.W. Richardson
4 percent and traverse a shelf blasted into a clif face 150 feet above the river. Track ends at the rugged outpost of Silverton, where the railroad once interchanged with three mining railroads branching out into the neighboring canyons. Silver, gold, and uranium were the primary traic. In the late 1800s, the United States government grappled with the evolving currency of the rapidly growing country. he heyday of silver — and the railroads that owed their existence to the metal — ended in 1893 when the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused a mass closing of mines and exodus of miners from the state. he Silverton branch limped along through much of the 20th century, revitalized in the late 1940s and early ’50s with a boom in Western-themed movies — many of which were ilmed on the never-dieselized railroad. Contrary to popular legend, Hollywood didn’t invent the iconic yellow-and-black “Bumblebee” paint scheme for better visibility in black-and-white ilms. he railroad designed it in 1949 for C-16 No. 268’s appearance at the Chicago Railroad Fair, and expanded it in 1950 to K-28 No. 473 and four coaches. he 1952 ilm “Denver and Rio Grande” featured the paint scheme on two locomotives wrecked in a spectacular head-on collision at the site of today’s rail-served Tall Timber Resort. By the 1960s, freight traic had almost vanished and with just summer tourist traic keeping the line aloat, the railroad petitioned for its abandonment. he request was denied due to the growing tourist traic, and the railroad added a second daily train to Silverton and bolstered the roster by building steel reproduction coaches and rebuilding retired freight cars into open gondolas. In 1981, the railroad inally found a way out: Florida citrus magnate Charles Bradshaw Jr. He ofered a complete buyout: track, structures, rolling stock, and locomotives. In addition, he purchased
550
DURANGO & SILVERTON
Silverton
Elev. 9,302' D&S depot/ SN enginehouse
Elk Park
Wye Twin bridges 550
Needleton tank water stop
Needleton Bitter Root Mine
D&S
er as Riv Anim
Cascade Canyon Wye
Electra Lake supplies water to the Tacoma Hydro plant
Tank Creek water stop Hydro plant
Tacoma High bridge Wye
High line
The D&RGW Silverton Branch was declared a National Historical Landmark in 1967.
Hermosa
550
S RGS Perins Peak Branch NG (1901-1926)
Perins Peak
DURANGO
Elev. 6,510' Depot, museum, roundhouse, and shops 160
RGS
S D&
D&RG D&RGW Railroad RGS Park Wye SG&N SIL SN
AN
JU
AN
UN
N
S
Denver & Rio Grande (1881-1921) Denver & Rio Grande Western (1921-1988) Rio Grande Southern NG (1891-1952) Silverton, Gladstone & Northerly NG (1899-1938) Silverton NG (1888-1926) Silverton Northern NG (1896-1942)
0
Scale
5 miles
N
© 2016 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Bill Metzger
D&RGW to Chama (abandoned 1969)
Elk Park Wye 115 feet Siding 885 feet
Needleton Siding 715 feet
San Juan Co. La Plata Co.
Cascade Wye 750 feet
MO
I TA
Silverton Wye 660 feet End of track
Dur ang
o&
Silv ert on
Anim as Ri ver
Rockwood
Tank Creek Tall Timber
Tacoma Siding 1,149 feet
Rockwood Wye 150 feet Siding 820 feet
Pinkerton Siding 900 feet
Hermosa Siding 400 feet
Railroad Park Wye 660 feet Home Ranch Siding 924 feet
D&S
Durango
SN
SIL
DURANGO & SILVERTON TRACK PROFILE 45.2 miles Rise: 2,897 feet Fall: 117 feet
N SG&
retired narrow gauge steam stored elsewhere on the D&RGW system that up to this point were too heavy for the Silverton branch’s bridges and too large for the narrow rock cuts. With reinforced bridges, widened cuts, and 90-pound rail, the newly formed Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad thrived. By the end of the 1980s, its yearly ridership was 212,000 passengers on summer Silverton trains and on winter trains to the new Cascade Canyon wye. Current owners Al and Carol Harper purchased the railroad in 1997 and continue to build upon Bradshaw’s work. In 2006, the railroad built a recreation of the popular, but short-lived, Silver Vista glassroofed observation gondola and does a thriving business in familyoriented branded special events such as Polar Express. A train ride to Silverton is an all-day adventure: 31⁄2 hours up, a 21⁄4-hour layover for lunch and exploration, and 31⁄2 hours back down. A passenger on trains 461/462 would depart Durango at 8 a.m. and arrive back at 5:15 p.m. In 2015, three trains ran daily during the peak summer season, 461/462, 463/464, and 465/466. Historically, the line has seen four trains and may again in the future. Passengers board morning departures to the accompaniment of Western movie soundtracks playing over platform loudspeakers. Trains are up to 12 cars long and consist mostly of yellow standard-class coaches and open-air gondolas, with several maroon or silver premium-class cars on the rear. A concession car splits the train in half and serves snacks, sot drinks, and alcoholic beverages. Departing from Durango, the train rolls through the open Animas River valley for 40 minutes before leaping into the 2.5-percent, half-hour assault on Hermosa Hill. he line is single track with frequent sidings and wyes. Rockwood, a lag stop with a wye and small yard, is a signiicant spot: For the next 27 miles to Silverton, the only access is by train, helicopter, or hiking trail. he engine crew gets a brief respite from the climb as the train carefully traverses the famous “high line,” at times crawling along a narrow shelf blasted into a clif face 150 feet above the Animas River below. Passengers crowd the clif side of the train, cameras and phones pointed out every open window and lining the open gondolas. Crossing the “high bridge” over the Animas River, the engine crew blows residue from the bottom of the boiler out the sides of the locomotive in spectacular blow-downs that usually produce a circular rainbow of the let side. From there, the climb begins again in earnest, 25 miles and 2,000 feet in elevation to be gained as the train charges northward, snaking along the river all the way. Rock clifs and evergreens tower high above and the clear turquoise river sparkles in the sunlight illuminating the canyon. Cinders rain down on the train and passengers in the open-air observation cars. Trains make brief stops not just for water but for hikers, raters, and zipline resort-goers. he place names are as rugged as the terrain: Tank Creek, the Bitter Root Mine, Needleton, No Name Slide, Minco, Elk Park, Grand Turk, Twin Sisters Slide. he barking exhaust of the locomotive becomes deafening, and the train bogs down as the grade stifens to a grueling 4 percent near milepost 488. Passengers and crew ind themselves wonder-
9,000 ft. 8,000 ft. 7,000 ft. 6,000 ft.
-1, 10 degrees, +1 451.52
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-0.22, 4 degrees, +1.2 460
24 degrees, +2.56 465
+2.44, 30 degrees, -1.33 470
475 Miles
20 degrees, +2.5 480
16 degrees, +3.8 485
20 degrees, +2.5 490
www.TrainsMag.com
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Baldwin K-36 class Mikado No. 480 leads northbound train 461 through Elk Park, Colo., on Sept. 27, 2015.
ing if they’ll make it over the hill. hen the hill breaks to a more reasonable climb, and the train seems to rocket along the river with newfound speed. From here to end of track in Silverton (milepost 497), the scenery changes as the thick forest thins to stark, rocky hillsides that press even closer against the train and river. he steep, hauntingly beautiful canyon echoes with the roar of the train, and the riverbanks turn ochre with oxidized iron from the mineral-rich volcanic caldera where Silverton nestles. Finally, the track levels out as the train leapfrogs the Animas for the ith and inal time, and the tight canyon opens into a vast plain surrounded by mountains. he town seems implausible, a tiny, frail outpost of humanity in barely navigable mountains. he train arrives in the middle of a dirt street and passengers swarm to restau-
K-28 No. 473 sits in Silverton after arriving with the 9:30 a.m. train from Durango, while the day’s first train has been turned and awaits its departure at 1:45 p.m. June 8, 2015. TR A I NS : David Lassen
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COLORADO RAILROADS
Two photos, Amy Radosevich
rants and stores. Total journey time: 31⁄2 hours. Passengers have a few hours in Silverton to eat lunch and explore before an equally long return train journey or a shorter bus ride back to Durango.
WILD WEST RAILROADING If you’re getting the impression that the Durango & Silverton is not just visually but operationally rooted in the Wild West, you’re correct. You won’t ind small crews communicating by radio here. Passenger trains still run with ive-person crews — engineer, ireman, conductor, head brakeman, and rear brakeman — and except in unusual situations, communicate exclusively with hand and whistle signals. A railroader’s nonverbal vocabulary includes about 40 hand signals, 18 whistle signals, and ive lantern signals for nighttime use. he hand signals aren’t just for stop and go. here’s a signal for every track in Durango yard and verbs for lining switches and tying and untying handbrakes. And, of course, there are unoicial ones for friends on other crews in passing, such as “Dinner ater work?” Crews use these signals in the yard and on the road. Most passengers will see employees giving hand signals down the side of the train — or at least hear the whistle signals that form the other side of the conversation — but yard switching is where the real fun begins. Switching ater the trains arrive in Durango is common, since ticket sales vary by day and the railroad tries to minimize hauling unnecessary equipment and the resulting wear on cars and locomotives. Once the conductor briefs the crew on the moves to be made, they might move trains for a half hour straight without a single verbal communication before it’s time for the next set of moves. he curvature of the yard almost always requires the head brakeman to pass the conductor’s and rear brakeman’s hand signals to the engineer. Brakemen are still required on passenger trains in part due to
the remoteness and ruggedness of the line in an emergency situation, and because of the workload of the train crew. he Durango & Silverton is one of the last holdouts of timetable operation, wherein scheduled trains are given authority to move by a published schedule rather than by block signals or paperwork — and protection against other moves starts with a railroader’s careful eye on his watch. Extra trains run on track authority given by the dispatcher. If a train falls behind schedule and another train is 10 minutes away (the minimum allowable time between trains), the train crew is responsible for protecting their train with torpedoes, fusees, and a red lag as appropriate. When protecting a stopped train, the irst line of defense are torpedoes. hese are small explosives that are clipped atop a rail and are set of when run over by a train. When protection from another train is required, a member of the train crew acting as lagman (usually the rear brakeman) will place torpedoes at a speciied distance from the stopped train — 1,000 feet at normal D&SNG track speed — then return halfway back to their train to lag. Two torpedoes placed 100 feet apart on the engineer’s-side rail signal an engineer to reduce speed for half a mile and be alert for a lagman, fusee, red lag, or other obstruction. Oten, the lagman will be recalled to his train by whistle signal before he has a chance to stop the following train. He will light a red road lare — a fusee — and leave it at his post. A train coming across a lit fusee must stop and wait for it to burn out. Fusees burn for a little over 10 minutes, which maintains the 10-minute separation between trains. Fusees can also be dropped of moving trains if they’re operating at reduced speed within the 10-minute window and there’s a risk of another train catching up. Brakemen are also responsible for keeping a close eye on their trains, watching for hotboxes, dragging equipment, and other unsafe conditions. Trains are primarily handled with a secondary
The conductor of an afternoon southbound run waves his hat to signal the engineer at the head end while returning to Durango from Silverton on June 13, 2015. TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt
straight air system but when necessary to revert back to the standard automatic air system, southbound trains need retainers. When active, these hold on a 10-pound brake application even after the engineer releases the brakes, keeping the train’s speed in check while allowing the auxiliary reservoirs to recharge. Brakemen and the conductor work with the engineer to set up and knock down retainers according to the grade and keep the brakeshoes from overheating and becoming useless by watching for excessive smoke and cycling which cars have retainers set as needed.
MAINTAINING A STEAM FLEET he Durango & Silverton leet consists of two types of steam locomotives, both original to the railroad’s predecessor. hree Alco
WORKING AS A BRAKEMAN in a 21st century world I OFTEN TELL PEOPLE that my job hasn’t changed in the past 100 years. The locomotives and operating practices are the same, but more importantly, so is my personal journey. In my experience, the statement “the romance of the rails is dead” is false. It’s just not comprised of waving at pretty girls and tossing fusees off the back of a caboose. My most authentic railroad experiences have included breaking up frozen ballast jammed in hopper doors, walking brake tests in the rain, and sitting in comfortable silence with the crew in the roundhouse waiting to clock in for our ninth straight day of working 6:54 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. I’m living the classic story of a kid leaving home for a railroad job out West and becoming a man, acquiring muscle, scars, and stories. I do my best, even when I’m exhausted, cold, or scared. I put in my unappreciated effort for a larger cause: safely moving trains. I’ve had my share of monotony: lifting tickets, passing signals while switching, and watching the train, but railroading can change faster than the Colorado weather. I risk death and injury every day by crawling between cars to lace up hoses, hanging off the
side of the train passing signals, and doing whatever else is required. I once had to ride the front of No. 486 dumping sand out of paper cups onto the rails after the pneumatic sanders failed. Inching along the catwalk back to the sand dome at speed with hot cinders burning my skin, shirt, and gloves, I knew a single misstep could kill me. Railroading has an ability to make you feel alive. Equally important are the wonderful moments of camaraderie, pride, awe, and accomplishment, after facing an unusual or difficult challenge. Before I worked here, I didn’t know if I had what it takes to be a railroader. Besides strength and stamina, the job requires attention to detail and focus, but also awareness of everything else going on, humility, leadership, and accountability. I’m an entry-level lackey who checks the bathrooms and sweeps the floors and an authority figure to passengers and on-board employees. I’m responsible for everyone’s safety, pitted against the variables of time, equipment, weather, and people. The railroad expects me to be a professional railroader, and so far I have complied. Working for a tourist railroad doesn’t pay like the main line, but the lifestyle has its perks. I
know my work schedule in advance, sleep in my own bed every night, and even when the dispatcher calls, I’m not required to accept the shift. The demanding lifestyle and seasonal schedule tends to attract mostly college-aged men to augment the retirees and full-timers, and my social circle is necessarily and by choice 100 percent railroaders. Will I be working here for the rest of my career? Probably not, but it sure is a great journey and an adventure that will shape the rest of my life. — Tyler Trahan
Brakeman Tyler Trahan rides a shove near Needle Creek Canyon on Sept. 26, 2015. www.TrainsMag.com
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Alco K-28 class Mikado No. 473 leads a photographer’s train across the Twin Bridges just south of Elk Park, Sept. 26, 2015.
K-28 class Mikados, Nos. 473, 476, and 478, were the mainstay of the Silverton branch when the railroad took over from the Rio Grande. Built in 1923, they are the only three survivors of the 10-locomotive class. he other seven were scrapped in the late 1940s ater wartime service in Alaska. he larger Baldwin K-36 class Mikados, Nos. 480, 481, 482, and 486, are later additions to the roster. hey were too large and heavy for cuts and bridges in the Rio Grande days but in the years following Bradshaw’s purchase of the line they were acquired to support expanded service on the upgraded line. Between the D&SNG and neighbor Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, all but one of this class survive and most are in operating condition. A handful of small industrial diesels round out the roster for switching, work trains, and limited
GE 45-ton locomotive No. 1 performs some last-minute switching in the Durango yard to adjust the consist of the 8:45 a.m. train to Silverton on June 8, 2015. TR A I NS : David Lassen
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rescue and special-event duties. Durango & Silverton steam locomotives make a 90-mile round trip every day, comparable to few other steam operations in North America except for those on mainline steam trips. Northbound they typically run at their tonnage rating, with K-28s good for about 10 cars and K-36s about 12. What’s more, they make this trip every day, only being rotated with other locomotives when they need shop work that can’t be done overnight. In the evening, trains arriving back in Durango unload their passengers and then pull around the balloon loop for servicing. he steam engine is cut of immediately and brought to the engine lead; the train crew will do any switching required with a small diesel so that the roundhouse crew can promptly begin working on the steam locomotive. Regular servicing includes dumping the ash pan, reilling the locomotive with sand and coal, and inspections. Since the locomotive is usually needed for service the next day, minor — or not-so-minor — repair work is oten done immediately. U.S. steam locomotives are required to have a complete teardown, inspection, and rebuild every 1,472 service days or 15 years, whichever comes irst. On the Durango & Silverton, locomotives tend to hit their “1472”-mark ater about ive years of service. he railroad typically performs this work on one locomotive every year. Nearly everything is done in-house in what is arguably one of the best steam shops in the country, built in 1989 ater a ire the previous year all but destroyed the original roundhouse. he railroad has the plans or castings for just about anything that might need replacing on its steam locomotives. On a round trip to Silverton and back, a ireman will shovel about 6 tons of coal into the irebox, mined 20 miles to the west in Hesperus, Colo. Oddly enough, this local source technically makes the railroad “green!” Not all of this coal burns, however — a spray
of small unburned particles known as cinders are drated out the stack and occasionally start ires in trackside brush. he railroad runs a gasoline-powered track speeder ater every train, its operator tasked with extinguishing these ires. On a dry day each train might start two or three ires. Anything too large for the patrolman to handle alone can be extinguished by the ireighting water carried in the boxcars of all but the irst train of the day. In the height of the dry season, the railroad employs a helicopter — call sign “Two Papa Yankee” — which patrols the line with a ire bucket! Modernization is a funny topic on the Durango & Silverton. he railroad is a for-proit company whose primary customer base is tourists with no special interest in trains, but preserving history is part of its mission. he inside cover of the employee timetable bears a quote from the railroad’s owner to this efect. However, the compromises made in the name of making a proit (all of which is reinvested in the railroad) tend to draw lak from purists in the railfan community, especially when compared with the neighboring Cumbres & Toltec. A diehard Rio Grande enthusiast would ind many nits to pick with the way things have changed in the name of progress and hauling an ever-increasing number of tourists. Ridership is growing steadily, both on regular trains to Silverton and on the railroad’s family-focused special events, which are themed around established brands such as Polar Express or Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. he railroad built a wye and event park just outside Durango for this venture. Sister company Rail Events has the rights for these special trains from their respective owners and sublicenses them not just to the Durango & Silverton but railroads around the country and overseas. he railroad also It’s 5 a.m., long before tourists arrive, but the railroad is already at work. The Durango roundhouse crew cleans the fire on 2-8-2 No. 480, preparing it for another day in the Rockies. TR A I NS : Jim Wrinn
A photographer’s train waits in Elk Park siding for a meet with Train 463, Sept. 26, 2015, at Elk Park. Two photos, Amy Radosevich
runs trains into the mountains for everything from beer-tasting to photography to Christmas-tree cutting. During Railfest the railroad hosts visiting equipment including Galloping Geese and various narrow gauge steam locomotives. here’s certainly a tradeof between increasing ridership and keeping the line accurate to its Rio Grande heritage. But is the railroad’s choice such a bad thing? he Durango & Silverton is introducing both a younger generation as well as people with no special interest in trains to steam railroading at its inest. While it may not be the Rio Grande way, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t real Colorado narrow gauge railroading: steam earning its keep pulling tonnage trains on a challenging grade proile, through some of the best scenery the state has to ofer. At least for the foreseeable future, you won’t need a DeLorean for this trip back in time.
FLYING HIGH at Fir
After the annual Rails & Ales special event, an Alamosa-bound train negotiates the loop at Fir, Colo. The view is west, looking from the upper level of the loop. Former Illinois Central round-end observation Mardi Gras is behind the power, a GE B39-8 of 1987 vintage.
Rio Grande Scenic puts rhythm and rails together Story and photos by Jim Wrinn
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ed Rocks Amphitheater near Denver may be Colorado’s best known outdoor concert venue, but another at Fir is unique in that visitors take a train to reach this spot in the Rockies. A train is the only way in or out of the 9,200-foot high location, the site of a sweeping loop on the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad. here is a passing track at the top of the mountain and a broad, level place to discharge passengers and switch, as well as a natural bowl perfect for a stage, seating, and amenities like food, drink, and restrooms.
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he outdoor concert niche was the perfect specialty for a new tourist railroad in a state illed with well-established scenic and historic preservation railroads. “We’ve got Durango, which is a spectacular railroad and a fantastic tourist town on one side,” says Ed Ellis, president of Chicago-based Iowa Paciic, the parent company. “We’ve got Royal Gorge nearby, which is amazing and everyone knows about it. And we’ve got Cumbres & Toltec close by, so we had to have something diferent.” hat something diferent began with a concert by folk-country legend Michael Martin Murphey in September 2007. From
a few shows in the irst few years, the railroad’s concert series at Fir has grown to more than 30 a year with acts like Juice Newton and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Depending on what else is going on, as many as 40 acts may play here between June and September. What makes the show at Fir unique is that there are no roads into Fir. You can’t drive there, and it’s too far from civilization to walk in, either. he only way to reach the show is via train. Even the performers and all of their gear come up on a special train from Alamosa. Ellis and his wife, Peggy, came up with
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the idea for outdoor concerts at Fir ater going to house concerts and hosting their own. Both music lovers, they jumped at the chance to have Murphey play a show ater an investor in the railroad put them in touch with his agent. In addition to the concert trains, the railroad also puts on an annual beer festival, Rails & Ales, each June, which sells out early, and operates regular tourist trips between Alamosa and La Veta, Colo., covering the rugged and scenic eastern side of La Veta Pass. he westbound climb from the village of La Veta to Fir is a spectacular trip utilizing railroad engineering’s favorite method of gaining ground while easing the impact on trains both going up and down: loops. he loops mean that tracks meander about the mountains on cuts, ills, bridges, and through tunnels to negotiate a 3 percent grade. Incredibly, as diicult as this railroad is from a railroader’s stand point, it is hard to believe that it is the bypass of an earlier narrow gauge alignment through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains about 1900. Yes, there was a much more diicult railroad here more than 116 years ago. What you see today is the easier of the two. In addition to the tourist trains, Iowa Paciic also runs freight here on its San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad subsidiary. he short line starts at a connection to the Union Paciic in Walsenburg, Colo., and goes west to Alamosa, the operating hub for the short line railroad, and the one-time location of the massive steam shops for the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s narrow gauge lines. In the fertile San Luis valley, tracks go south to Antonito, Colo., near the New Mexico border and west to South Fork. Dual gauge tracks — both 3-foot and standard gauge — marked the line between Alamosa and Antonito until the narrow gauge’s demise as a
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regular freight carrier in 1968. here is even a shortline-to-shortline connection at Monte Vista with the San Luis Central Railroad. Utilizing 149.6 miles of track, dieselhauled freights haul grain, minerals, chemicals, and traic for the San Luis Central. Among the minerals loaded is scoria, the lava rock you ind at home improvement stores. Lumber and logs are a new traic source the railroad plans to develop, and with 2016’s sot outlook for rail traic, stored freight cars are also part of the mix. More tracks may be needed to hold all of the stored cars. La Veta Pass, at 9,242 feet above sea level, the railroad believes, is the highest freight route in North America. Steam powered trains were part of the railroad’s lineup when it was acquired in 2005 from Rail America. Former Southern Paciic 2-6-0 No. 1744 and lanky but stout former Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0 No. 18 did the honors. But in Colorado they were hard to distinguish amidst the swarms of narrow gauge Mikados. And on the grades, they oten needed a helper.
“We dropped steam, but ridership didn’t drop,” Ellis says. “hat told us our market wasn’t about what was pulling the trains. It was about the trip and the destination.” he route was originally part of a line the Denver & Rio Grande tried to build from Denver to Mexico City. he tracks arrived in Alamosa in 1877, continuing into southwest Colorado in search of minerals. When the through route did not materialize, the line became a signiicant hauler of San Luis Valley produce. Today, the produce trains are gone, replaced with single cars of potatoes, tourist trains, and the rhythm of the rails on most weekends in the summer and early fall. he music is especially poignant on one of Ellis’ favorite passenger cars, round-end observation, Mardi Gras, of City of New Orleans passenger train fame. hat train also inspired the famous Steve Goodman song. here’s not a band that plays at Fir that wouldn’t perform Goodman’s song on the trip home. “We always play it,” Ellis says. “How could we not play it?”
San Luis & Rio Grande GE B39-8E No. 8527 passes a passenger-car icon, former Illinois Central round-end observation Mardi Gras, at Fir, Colo., at a height of better than 9,200 feet. www.TrainsMag.com
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Cumbres & Toltec, the highest and longest narrow gauge survivor, always has one more mountain to climb Story and photos by Jim Wrinn IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS, above the 9,500-foot level, the cold thin air nips at the skin on the edge of a breeze lavored with coal soot. With fresh snow on the ground, we have gathered to witness the ritual of a narrow gauge steam freight battling gravity at one of the most sacred Denver & Rio Grande Western locations, Tanglefoot Curve, just out of sight of the ultimate goal, 10,000-foot Cumbres Pass. 86
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he acolytes are two veterans, K-36 Mikados Nos. 489 and 484, the latter sandwiched into the consist mid-train. heir load is 30 freight cars, and three cabooses. It is a veritable steam and narrow gauge lover’s version of heaven, an amazing mirror of what this railroad looked like 60 years ago. he train charges around the loop, the sun shines, and the engines roar past, leaving spectators on a Chama Steam 2015 photo
outing speechless. We have seen something few have. As it has been since 1880, the mountain has been climbed once more. hat this struggle continues is amazing in itself. he Cumbres & Toltec Scenic, a 64mile piece of the Denver & Rio Grande’s famous San Juan extension, should have been dead a half century ago. hat was well past the time when narrow gauge freight trains were economically feasible.
Nearing the summit of Cumbres Pass, two Mikados (one mid-train, visible above the first stock car), 30 freight cars, and three cabooses encircle Tanglefoot Curve in October 2015.
Instead, it is an incredibly vibrant railroad with steam trains running in both directions each day. Just how alive this railroad is was driven home earlier in the day when not two but three Mikados locked couplers on the point of the 30-car train and stormed out of Chama, N.M., toward Cumbres Pass. (A train for photographers earlier in the fall consisting of 35 freight cars is believed to be the longest train on the railroad since the Rio Grande quit running here in 1968.) So much about this preservation railroad is larger than life: he leet of ive operating Mikados, all of them native to the railroad; a yard full of authentic rolling stock; grades of up to 4 percent; curves of up to 20 degrees; two massive bridges; two tunnels; the infrastructure at Chama that includes a shop, a coaling tower, depot, and cattle pens; and
the water tanks, section houses, and snow sheds that complete the fabric from one end to the other, all in a land that time seems to have forgotten. All of this screams out that today is not 2016 but 1925, or if you overlook the motive power, maybe even years earlier than that; it’s not hard to convince yourself that the Rio Grande is still moving sheep, or oil, or pipe, or lumber, and a few passengers with steam power. It’s not that hard to stand on the sidewalk on Terrace Avenue in Chama and literally turn your back on the modern era and look into a tableau from railroading’s past. It is not diicult to stand at the grade crossing at the Antonito depot and watch a train pass the “End of Standard Gauge” sign (see page 5) and know that you are entering a diferent railroading world.
“With this railroad, we’re looking at the living history of the West,” says President John Bush. “his was the engine of community and economic development back John Bush then, and it is that way today. Out on the railroad we have 64 miles of 1880.” Yet, for all of its gritty and sweaty integrity, for all of its authenticity (the railroad became a National Historic Landmark in 2013 and supporters would love to see it attain UNESCO World Heritage site status), for all of its acclaim and following (its nonproit Friends count more than 2,500 memwww.TrainsMag.com
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A 70-car Rio Grande freight drops down Tanglefoot Curve on June 11, 1960, behind Mikado No. 486. Rober t F. Collins
Mikados Nos. 497 and 488 lift an eastbound train up Cumbres Pass in June 1963. Under Rio Grande management such sights would only last five more years. Cornelius W. Hauck
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bers; more on their contributions later) it is still a railroad caught in daunting struggles of 21st century realities. Ridership igures, changing expectations of visitors, capital funding, operators, politics (the states of Colorado and New Mexico have jointly owned the railroad through a commission since 1970), the tolls of time and wear on locomotives and rolling stock, track conditions, forest ires that curtailed operations, and even a ire that severed a major railroad bridge all play into recent history. For most operators this long list of signiicant challenges would be too much. But not here. For the Colorado narrow gauge, there is always one obstacle ater another. here is always one more mountain to climb, and if you’re at the throttle, you’d better have it pulled out all the way, reverser down in the corner, and the steam gauge needle on the peg. Bush, who guides the railroad today, understands the situation well. He was the railroad’s chief mechanical oicer from 1989 to 1996 and returned as president in 2013. He’s been involved in railway preservation for much of his life, either here, elsewhere in Colorado, or in California. He was president of the Tourist Railway Association. Twenty-ive years ago, when Kyle Railways was the contract operator and he was in charge of the locomotives and rolling stock, he says, management thinking was
Harry Haas works the train brakes while conductor Alan Loomis and engineer Soni Honegger converse in the cab of Mikado No. 489 leading a train down hill near Los Pinos, Colo., in October 2015. It is the end of the operating year and start of shop season.
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year to year, from one operating season to the next. “here was never any long-range plan, there was never any thinking about what the railroad would be like 25 years from now,” he says. “he focus was on how well they would do through the end of the contract.” Year-to-year thinking, and a succession of operators in the last 20 years, helped him to understand that his railroad needs long-term vision and planning if it is to succeed and be here for generations to visit and appreciate. To that end, Bush is preparing a 10-year plan that calls for stable funding from the states of Colorado and New Mexico for at least ive years to continue to upgrade track and rolling stock. To make this happen, each state would need to contribute $1.25 million per year to put the railroad in a good state of repair. From there, the railroad would move to a self-sustaining business model, generating its own operating revenues and money to pay for capital projects. Still needed would be funding (about $400,000) for operations of the joint Colorado-New Mexico Railroad Commission, which operates the C&TS. But now that the commission operates the railroad through a president, there’s no management fee to collect or proit that goes to a concessionaire. hat money stays with the commission and can be plowed back into the railroad. Such a funding plan would be welcomed at an organization that has taken a much-beloved but weary railroad and rebuilt it literally from the ground up, including the track.
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TAKING CARE OF BASICS Deteriorating track conditions became a serious issue a decade ago, and in the years since the railroad has focused on the basics — ballast, ties, and roadbed. Since 2006, 94,000 tons of ballast and 59,250 ties have been installed while 12 bridges have been replaced or restored. he railroad has reworked 4.3 miles of embankments and shoulders, upgraded the drainage on the entire route, and surfaced and aligned the railroad twice, Bush says. Additionally, all highway crossings were replaced, and the Chama wye — the tail track was once the main line to Durango — was extended. he plan is working — C&TS’s track has never been in better shape — but it is a never-ending job. At the end of the 2015 season, the railroad started on the Monday ater the last train ran and rebuilt the abutments and center pier of the Chama River bridge so the structure would be ready when the railroad resumes operations this spring. Funding for track and bridge work got a boost in 2015 when New Mexico appropriated $645,000 and the Colorado General Assembly approved $1.3 million for the joint commission. he money also covered the federally mandated 1,472-day inspection
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and boiler overhaul of locomotive No. 488, a task expected to be completed by opening day 2016. In addition to the bridge and locomotive work, New Mexico approved $30,000 to rebuild the water system supplying the tank at Sublette, N.M., a station stop on the east side of the line, and $50,000 to restore the sand house adjacent to the coal tipple in the Chama yard. here’s also $65,000 toward matching funds for a federal grant to build a visitor and interpretive center at street level above the Chama yard on a site yet to be chosen. he C&TS still needs about $40,000 for its share of the $425,000 project. he remaining $500,000 will be split between keeping No. 488 in service and ongoing track maintenance. he track upgrade — particularly shoulder grading, bridge work, tie replacement, and ballast — is about two-thirds complete and could be done in ive years with adequate funding. “We have a safe railroad,” Bush says, “but it’s had basically 40 years of deferred maintenance, but it’s really more than that because the Rio Grande deferred maintenance before they gave it up.” In less than 10 years,
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track rehabilitation has changed the railroad’s character. To observers, what was a weedy roadbed of aging ties laid on dirt and cinders with a little ballast looks more like a well groomed main line beitting the BNSF Railway or Union Paciic, with deep ballast, heavy rail, and new ties. Track rehabilitation and upgrades will continue — vitally important from a safety aspect, of course, but also an attribute that cuts down on locomotive maintenance, and gives a smooth ride that makes paying passengers happy, too. hat brings us to an important barometer, ridership, which shows encouraging signs. While annual ridership is still of from its peak of about 60,000 under Kyle Railways back in the 1980s, it is holding steady and growing. 2015 ridership was 36,170, up 9.8 percent from 2014, which was an of year. “We’re still recovering from the ire,” Bush says, in reference to the Lobato trestle ire that severed the railroad in 2010 just a few miles outside of its main operating base in Chama, dropping ridership to below the 30,000 per year level. Most Colorado tourist railroads reported www.TrainsMag.com
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A rare Cumbres Pass tripleheader makes a photo runby at Coxo, Colo., in October 2015. An early snowfall has blanketed the ground near the 9,000-foot level while the last aspen trees hang onto their color.
a good season in 2015, a year free of widespread summer wildires that have dominated the news and kept tourists away in previous years. Some reported their best year in more than a decade as Americans took advantage of cheap gas and an improved jobs outlook. How many riders does the Cumbres & Toltec need to stay in the black? Bush says the railroad is counting on improving ridership about 5 percent per year, and thanks to last year’s surge is now ahead of schedule. “We overshot our goal of 35,000 last year,” he says, adding that the 2016 goal is 38,515 riders. As has been the case since the railroad began, most riders board in Chama instead of Antonito. And in line with the trend nationwide 90
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among tourist railroads and museums, much of the ridership growth is in premium-class seating — a pricier ticket but one that comes with more room and amenities. In years to come, expect to see the railroad’s earliest coaches rebuilt with clerestory roofs and as extra-fare cars of various designs. Would anyone object to riding across Cumbres Pass in a cafe-parlor car? I think not. hose riders, Bush says, will be there to ride regular trains and specials, but the railroad will not take on homas the Tank Engine or Polar Express events. “We have found that those do not work for us,” he says. “What we are trying to do is to be the step back in time.” hat approach, of course, is a welcomed avenue for this railroad. he Cumbres & Toltec has even established its own Christmas tradition by iring up a locomotive and making short runs out of Antonito one weekend and out of Chama the next in an
efort aimed at the local community. he price of a train ride: One non-perishable food item that goes to the local food bank or one new toy that goes to Toys for Tots. In 2015, the second year of this efort, the railroad collected more than 5,500 pounds of food and more than 1,500 new toys.
LOCOMOTIVES TO MOVE MOUNTAINS One area where the railroad is already strong is in motive power. Right ater track that’s the essential building block of a preservation railway. he daily workhorses of the railroad, four original Rio Grande K-36 Mikados from the 1920s, are in good form, all of them having undergone 1,472-day inspections (a Federal Railroad Administration mandate since 2000). Nos. 484 and 487 have been through the inspection twice, and No. 488 got its second inspection over winter 2015-16 with an anticipat-
Cumbres past: Rio Grande 4-6-0 No. 168 rests inside the shop at Antonito, Colo., awaiting restoration for use in movies and special events. The engine was built in 1888.
ed return to service this spring. Bush notes that the K-36 locomotives will see an interesting and amazing historical milestone this year. As of this operating season, they will now have labored longer for the Cumbres & Toltec than they did for the Rio Grande (46 years vs. 45 years). Mudhen No. 463, a smaller and older Mikado with loads of character is in operation and serves as a Cumbres Pass helper when loads demand two engines and as a special event and photo charter favorite. Only K-37 No. 497 has not been rebuilt under the new FRA rules, but the railroad is not so desperate for more power that it needs this older and heavier engine. It will remain out of service for now. A 2015 plan to exchange K-36 No. 483 for Durango & Silverton K-28 No. 478 fell through, and No. 483 — the irst engine to run on the railroad in 1970 — languishes on the dead line without a plan for its future
Back to the future: A Rio Grande Railway Post Office car is under rebuild at Antonito as part of a four-car train for specials. The other cars are two coaches and a pay car.
operation. he swap would have guaranteed No. 483’s return to service, and given the C&TS a new model, one harkening to the 1920s when the Rio Grande San Juan passenger train was the way to travel by train here. But that is not to be, at least for now. he motive power leet, however, will see one big change with a newcomer that is a true way, way-back machine. Last fall, the C&TS took out a 45-year lease on Rio Grande 4-6-0 No. 168. he 1883 vintage Baldwin was one of six Class 47/T-12 narrow gauge locomotives built for the Denver & Rio Grande in 1883. he locomotive has quite a history: It pulled the irst passenger train from Denver to Ogden, Utah, where the narrow gauge route connected with the Transcontinental Railroad. he railroad began scrapping sister engines in 1933, saving Nos. 168 and 169.
No. 169 visited the World’s Fair in 1939 and returned west to static display in Alamosa, Colo., where it remains. No. 168 was on display in Colorado Springs for 77 years. Bush knows the engine well; as a contractor in 1985, he performed a cosmetic restoration that included raising its ballast pedestal and illuminating the engine at night. No. 168 is now safe inside the C&TS shop in Antonito undergoing an inspection that will determine the full scope of work, but Bush says he knows he needs to raise at least $650,000 to bring back to life this example of some of the earliest power to run on Cumbres Pass. Bush says his goal is to restore the locomotive to the way it appeared between 1913 to 1917, when the locomotive had its last major upgrade. He expects to have an authentic train to www.TrainsMag.com
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Veteran of 27 years as a conductor and before that a teenaged coach cleaner and fire patrol member, Ray Martinez adjusts an errant strap on a drop-bottom gondola. Martinez is a fourth-generation narrow gauge railroader, and his wife and son are railroaders, too.
go with it, including Rio Grande paycar F, coaches Nos. 256 and 292, and Railway Post Oice car No. 65. Additionally, tourist sleeper No. 470, which is being restored by the nonproit Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic in Colorado Springs, will be a part of the train. Coach No. 292 is the recipient of a Colorado State Historical Fund grant, and its restoration will begin this year. he timetable to restore and return the entire historic train is still a few years out. But when it runs it will truly be an opportunity to glimpse the railroad as it was more than 100 years ago. One aspect of the railroad that deserves special mention is the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic. Established in 1981 and formally incorporated in 1988, it has provided volunteer labor to keep the historic fabric of the railroad intact (from mile markers to boxcars and everything in between) as well as funding projects worth $800,000 over the last 10 years and raising $1.3 million to rebuild No. 463. Work sessions have grown from one per year to seven one-week work sessions attended by hundreds of people, says Friends Executive Director Tim Tennant. hose volunteers contributed more than 25,000 hours of service to the railroad just in 2015. “At irst, painting and lettering of rolling stock was sorely needed and represented the majority of the work,” Tenant says. “Now, very sophisticated projects are taking place, including ground-up restorations of important maintenance-of-way equipment, a passenger car and Railway Post Oice car.” he Friends’ repair shop in Colorado Springs provides a convenient location for volunteers, and it has been used to rebuild pile driver OB, derrick OP and Jordan 92
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spreader OU, among other pieces. he ultimate compliment to this organization’s dedication and professionalism is its designation as the oicial custodian of the railroad’s historic assets, a role that reports to both state historic preservation oices.
RAILROAD PEOPLE While the trains and scenery are magnificent, another aspect of the railroad is worth exploring: the family of railroaders here. Generations worked the narrow gauge for the Rio Grande, and many carry on this tradition with the C&TS. Case in point: veteran conductor Ray Martinez. Both his father and grandfather worked here starting in the 1930s and 1940s. “I still have their pay stubs,” Martinez says proudly. “hey did track work and served as hostlers.” Ray Martinez began as a coach cleaner as a junior-high-school student in 1974 and hired on full-time as part of the crew that followed the train on motorcars as a ire patrol. He became a conductor 27 years ago and is a staple on the trains. “I was just born and raised here,” he says. “Chama and the railroad are inseparable.” His wife, Roberta, herself a fourth-generation railroader, also works for the railroad in human resources. heir son, Evan, who just turned 18, is working part time in the shop and ater high-school graduation plans to work on the railroad this summer before going to college to study business; his dream is to one day return to help run the railroad that means so much to this family. “We love it,” Ray Martinez says. “We enjoy it, and we want to keep it going for another 100 years.” hat family is a part of this railroad’s story is not lost on Bush. He knows that this is
worth celebrating, remembering, and preserving. Time is moving on. Like the K-36 Mikados that have been in preservation longer than they were in regular service, the people who have preserved the narrow gauge are now a signiicant part of the rich tapestry that is the Colorado railroad story. Toward that end, the railroad is planning a new special event — this one about the people and history of not only the Rio Grande but the C&TS and all of the other narrow gauge railroads of the region. he “Narrow Gauge Rendezvous” will take place in August and will be billed as a railroaders’ reunion that is open to the public. Bush hopes to bring in guest locomotives and make it a big event focused on railroaders and their stories. It will be an opportunity to share and record the multitude of tales that make this route a legendary part of not only railroad history but the history and soul of the American West. hat story has been told before, and is worth retelling again and again. In the October 1969 issue of Trains, an entire
Narrow gauge freight as it might have been before 1968. Two Mikados tug on the drawbars of 30 ancient freight cars near Osier, Colo., Cumbres bound with, as always, one more mountain to climb.
issue devoted to narrow gauge, Editor David P. Morgan wrote that “in the inal analysis, the narrow gauge faltered because of red igures on the bottom line of a proit and loss statement, never because of a Cumbres that 44-inch drivers couldn’t conquer or a blizzard that rotaries couldn’t best or a descent with which air compressors couldn’t cope. “Never.” Morgan was right about that. Today, with the right people who love, appreciate, and toil for this amazing railroad, steam trains will run. We’ll continue to think that the year is not 2016, but a much earlier time for man and machine. Rugged, determined, full of enterprise, the C&TS is a railroad with an incredible past, a remarkable present-day story of survival, and one that is ready — if not eager — to climb the next mountain.
Emblematic of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic in fall is this view showing aspen trees ablaze. The railroad crosses the state line 11 times. This view is near Osier, Colo. Br yan Bechtold www.TrainsMag.com
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Looping THROUGH HISTORY Georgetown Loop defies time, gravity, and change by Jim Wrinn PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
Former West Side Lumber Shay No. 9 leads a train across the Devil’s Gate High Bridge. The reincarnated loop is a landmark in the state.
H
istory, it is said, repeats itself. Put another way, history goes in circles. And in the Rockies, 45 miles west of Denver, the Georgetown Loop Railroad is a living example of history that is looping through time. Built in 1884 and dismantled in 1938, the loop was rebuilt in 1984 just in time to celebrate the centennial of its construction. An engineering feat when it was built and no less impressive of a landmark today, the loop makes a corkscrew route from Georgetown to Silver Plume with 3.1 miles of track on 4 percent grades. he highlight is the recreated Devil’s Gate High Bridge, 95 feet high above Clear Creek and its own tracks below, a curving structure where the train tiptoes across in dramatic fashion, as well as ofering riders a fantastic view. Such a remarkable railroad owes its origins to the 1870s push into the Rockies for
gold, silver, and lead riches, and to the engineering genius of one man. he coming of the railroad into Clear Creek Canyon is worthy of a book (several, in fact, have been written) and a movie as a series of entrepreneurs and companies, including inancier Jay Gould and the Union Paciic, pushed rails higher and higher into the Rockies. Just beyond Georgetown, the valley narrowed and the mountains steepened, and it appeared as if the railroad would be stalled. UP chief engineer Jacob Blickensderfer, who laid out the tracks of the transcontinental railroad from Green River, Wyo., to Ogden, Utah, designed the looping route between Georgetown and Silver Plume to gain more than 500 feet of elevation in a distance of less than 2 miles, all the while holding grades to 4 percent or less. Blickensderfer’s daring plan worked. While Gould and the UP arrived too late
to tap into signiicant mineral wealth, their railroad, which came under control of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s Colorado & Southern subsidiary, did arrive in time to capitalize on a new revenue source, tourists. Arriving by the trainload from Denver as many as seven times a day, they came to witness the spectacular Rockies up close. But that was not to last. he proliferation of the automobile, better roads, and the economic stress of the Great Depression brought an end to the railroad and the loop. Events marking the 1959 centennial of Colorado’s gold rush led to the acquisition of the Lebanon Gold Mine and the creation of a Colorado Historical Society preservation site that encompassed the loop. he society made plans to rebuild the loop, something that didn’t begin until 1973. Fortunately, those plans were in place prior to the coming of Interstate 70, which could www.TrainsMag.com
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A Colorado & Southern train climbs toward Silver Plume, ducking under the Devil’s Gate bridge shortly before the end came in 1938. The bridge was restored in 1984. R.H. Kindig
have easily obliterated the historic landscape forever. he Interstate’s four lanes, thankfully, represent only a minor intrusion on the last few hundred feet of the railroad at Silver Plume, where the onramp and the tracks are next to each other across Clear Creek. hrough the next 11 years, train operations began and the loop bridge was reconstructed. Steam and smoke were visible once COLORADO RAILROADS
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more. he sounds of steam trains charging around hairpin turns near Silver Plume were audible once more. he railroad between Georgetown and Silver Plume was back. But not even preservation is a constant in this world. Over the years, the Georgetown Loop endured changes in railroad management, motive power, and rolling stock. Political diferenc-
To Mt. McClellan
es in the early 2000s led to new operators and a series of steam locomotives, notably Colorado & Southern 2-6-0 No. 9. hat 1884 engine, which developed a mere 16,000 pounds of tractive efort, regrettably operated only a year on the railroad she once plied in regular service. She was just too old, too small, and too worn out to run the loop on a daily basis. Today, the railroad relies on former West Side Lumber Co. three-truck Shay No. 9, one of the largest and heaviest narrow gauge Shays ever built, and also one of the most powerful with more than 36,000 pounds of tractive efort. While geared steam locomotives were strangers to the loop back in the day, they were found nearby at Silver Plume on the gold- and touristhauling Argentine Central, so they were in the region. No. 9 is on long-term lease from the Midwest Central Railroad in Iowa, another preservation railway. he sure-footed, superheated Shay is deinitely at home on the loop’s tight curves (30 degrees maximum) and steep grades. Backing up the Shay is an unusual sixaxle narrow gauge diesel, No. 1203, a 600-hp model built by Porter in 1947 for U.S. Gypsum’s industrial railroad in southern California. It contains an Alco 251 engine and
Shay No. 9 leads a Georgetown-bound train downgrade across the Devil’s Gate High Bridge in June 2013. Come autumn, the aspen trees decorate the railroad in a bust of translucent yellow. This view is from a convenient overlook off Interstate 70 going eastbound near Silver Plume. Trains: Jim Wrinn
was rebuilt at the Sumpter Valley Railroad in Oregon before delivery in 2008. Starting in 2016, another steam locomotive will keep No. 9 company: a 1926 Baldwin 2-8-0, No. 111. With almost 25,000 pounds of tractive efort, the former International Railways of Central America locomotive will ensure continued steam operations on the loop for years to come. Behind the locomotives are narrow gauge freight cars turned into passenger cars, among them open-top gondolas from the Rio Grande, and dining-lounge cars from Alaska’s White Pass & Yukon Railway. hrough almost 30 years of visiting the loop and spending time there, I’ve come to appreciate it from many angles. To view the loop for the irst time from beneath the Devil’s Gate is to view a spectacle that is a national treasure. A sense of awe and wonderment strikes you as you realize that someone put this bridge up for the irst time more than 130 years ago. Trains ran over it regularly for more than 50 years. And it was absent from the landscape, like a missing tooth in a portrait painting, for better than 45 years. To view the loop from an overlook of I-70 high above is to see it in a completely diferent way. It becomes small, and fragile,
Diesel No. 1203 drops downgrade at Hall Tunnel siding with a passenger train. The unusual six-axle Porter was built for an industrial railroad in California. TR A I NS : Brian Schmidt
appearing like a model railroad, a zig-zag of lines it into a small space with bridges, cuts, and ills (but no tunnels). But my favorite view point is from the train, preferably from the cab of a hardworking steam locomotive, exerting itself to move tonnage against gravity. When the engineer opens the throttle on a train starting from beneath the Devil’s Gate, it is a powerful sound as the locomotive digs in and begins to move. he train zips through the Georgetown station, rounds a curve, crosses Clear Creek for the irst time, and then hugs the mountain.
he high bridge is coming, and anticipation builds as if you were riding a rollercoaster, inching itself to the top of the biggest hill. he engine moves out onto the bridge and on a sunny day you can see into the valley far below. he breeze makes you feel as if you are loating. All too soon, the engine moves into the woods and climbs the mountain past Hall Tunnel, stopping at the Lebanon Mine to discharge passengers. Zigging and zagging across the hillside, the train inally reaches Silver Plume. he loop has been conquered again, and the circle of history has been closed once more. www.TrainsMag.com
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ailroading during World War II was in its prime, but it quickly declined throughout the 1950s and ’60s, while the rest of the nation sought modernity. In 1971, the Department of Transportation opened the High Speed Ground Transportation Test Center near Pueblo, Colo., in an attempt to maintain pace with Europe and Asia in the pursuit of high speed rail. But the U.S. and its economy weren’t ready. By the mid-1970s, an economic recession and oil crisis shited the center’s focus toward improving the safety and eiciency of existing ground transportation. Nearly 40 years later, the industry is on the cusp of change again, driven by environmentalism, dependence on foreign oil, policy, and national security. 98
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In October 2008, Association of American Railroads analysts determined that revenue ton-miles of rail freight will increase 5080 percent during the next 20 years. In order to meet that demand, railroads will need to manage their assets more eiciently and with greater attention to the environment. When terrorists attacked on 9/11, the world — and railroading — changed forever. Where the industry once focused on preventing and cleaning up the unintentional release of hazardous materials, now it must seek to prevent an intentional release and mitigate the inherent dangers. he change that lies ahead for the industry could easily be on par with dieselization and the Staggers Act of 1980. Only time will tell for certain. But the Transportation Technology Center, as the transportation department testing facility is now known, stands uniquely qualiied to guide the industry through this time of technological upheaval.
A close-up view of ballast, rails, concrete ties, and fasteners under review at the Transportation Technology Center’s high tonnage loop on the arid plains east of Pueblo, Colo. TR A I NS : Steve Sweeney
THE TECH CENTER’S CORE CAPABILITIES Because much of the research that goes on at the center deals with proprietary information, both employees and customers are tight-lipped about what happens within the 52-square-mile site that hosts more than 48 miles of track conigured into six distinct sections, plus two small loops. he largest section, the 13.5-mile Railroad Test Track, is used primarily for high-speed stability and endurance testing for electric-powered passenger cars and locomotives. Its catenary can deliver an alternating current in a variety of voltages, or direct current. A balloon loop connected to the Railroad Test Track contains more than 100 sections of rail, with known defects, welded together to evaluate the efectiveness of rail law detection systems. he next smaller loop is the 9.1-mile oval Transit Test Track, equipped with third-rail power and using various construction
methods, such as continuous-welded or jointed rail, and wood or concrete ties. his loop, designed for testing low-speed operation or light rail vehicles, also has a 150-foot-radius tight turn, or “screech” loop, which enables technology center engineers to investigate wheel noise, car-curving performance, and suspensionsystem stability. he Wheel/Rail Mechanism track is a 3.5-mile loop on which engineers evaluate railcar and locomotive performance on smooth track, as well as track that has been intentionally altered to produce undesirable conditions. Center oicials use this track, with its constant turns in a variety of degrees, to evaluate rail vehicle safety in curves before new vehicles are authorized for use in interchange service. Speciically, AAR tests freight rail vehicles of various designs according to its “Manual of Standards and Recommended Practices” to certify them for interchange service. www.TrainsMag.com
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In 2015, researchers at TTC wanted to know more about the bursting strength of air bags used to cushion freight loads. Researchers monitored the bags until they burst. Two photos, TR A I NS : Steve Sweeney
he smallest of the main routes, but easily the one that sees the most traic, is the High Tonnage Loop at 2.7 miles. his is where TTC tests track components for reliability, wear, and fatigue under heavy axle loads, logging 1.75 million gross tons of traic density per day. An 18,000-ton train with three locomotives and 110 315,000-pound cars travels at 40 mph from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., four days a week, February to May and September to October — while the locomotive engineer watches from the ground. hrough the late 1990s and early 2000s, tech center personnel had been integrating more computers into their cabs to provide additional information. Trains have been running via computer with a person in the cab monitoring it for years, says Brian Smith, TTC technical manager. “Like much of the research done here, it was a matter of, ‘Can it be done?’” Smith says. Although unmanned operation suits the center’s needs on the high-tonnage loop, no one there or at AAR has plans to ofer this capability to the industry. he Precision Test Track is a 6.2-mile track used primarily for vehicle dynamic behavior and standards tests. Speciically, engineers have designed track sections to evaluate dynamic pitch and bounce through vertical laws, dynamic twist and roll by cross-level laws, and dynamic yaw and sway induced by laterally misaligned track. he inal sections of test track are the shortest, but host the most dramatic tests: the impact track and barrier wall. he threequarter-mile impact track hosts full-scale collisions enabling engineers to evaluate crashworthiness modiications of locomotive cabs and passenger cars. A 2,500-foot inclined track near the property’s entrance leads to a rigid barrier capable of taking a 3-millionpound impact. Aside from the test tracks, though, the center also ofers full laboratory testing, including a vibration test unit that literally shakes a vehicle (rail, bus, or of-road) vertically and laterally through the wheels to evaluate suspension; a simuloader, which applies dynamic forces to test for multi-axial fatigue and durability; a side frame and bolster fatigue test machine, a mini-shaker unit that can evaluate suspension in railcar components and partial systems; rolling-load test machines to evaluate how and under what conditions rail wears; a dynamometer to similarly examine wheels; an air-brake research facility with 150 complete sets of air-brake equipment to evaluate various systems’ performance; a rolling bearing test facility; a center plate tester; metallurgical laboratory; and a component test laboratory. 100
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Who are TTC’s customers? First, the Federal Railroad Administration, through the transportation department, is both owner and customer. As of 1982, the AAR began leasing the property from the government and accepted responsibility to operate and maintain it. As part of the deal, the government retains priority testing rights. Because AAR is comprised of the major U.S. freight railroads, they are operators as well as customers, too. Unless their trains run on the U.S. rail network, transit agencies don’t need to have their cars tested at all before going into revenue service, but several do anyway. Other customers include suppliers and developers. Having their products tested in Pueblo enables the developers to determine how their products will respond in service more quickly than they might in regular revenue service. TTC testing can also help demonstrate the value of a product to potential railroad customers. he people who use this TTC business segment, though, oten come from outside the railroad industry. hey are ireighters, police oicers, shippers, and others who might respond to a hazardous materials release, and receive specialized training at the Security and Emergency Response Training Center. TTC added its “Torch Facility” in the early 1980s as a setting for testing equipment used to transport hazardous materials. In 1985, oicials added indoor and outdoor space to provide a classroom setting as well as hands-on practice for railroaders to learn to respond to a hazmat release on their own property. hese courses include: Advanced Emergency Response Specialist training that adds additional complexity to the scenarios that an emergency responder could face; Leadership and Management of surface transportation incidents training for leaders who are expected to manage an incident that could include multiple agencies or organizations; Tactical HazMat Operations training for law enforcement oicers, teaching them how to safely respond and operate in protective clothing during tactical incidents involving mass transit and passenger systems; and Crude by Rail Emergency Response training that provides irst responders basic knowledge, skills, and abilities to respond to incidents involving rail-hauled crude oil. Fity to 75 percent of the training involves hands-on experience learning how to identify and operate the variety of valves available on tank cars, and how to navigate a derailment site safely. he training center is likely the only place in the nation where a railroad wrecking company creates derailment sites rather than cleans them up. Four separate derailments are arranged on the property, and many of the tank cars involved are connected to water and air hoses to simulate vapor or liquid releases. But the trainers don’t stop there. Several cars are itted with pipes and gasoline to provide smoke, ire, and sometimes explosions for trainees to contend with. In 2015, the center Railroad industry suppliers often trained more than 3,700 stutest their equipment at TTC first dents in Pueblo or in other reto prove its worth to customers. mote locations. One example is this set of camhe irst priority is to build eras that scans passing test students’ conidence, the hazmat trains for missing or broken training center’s director says. equipment.
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“When our students arrive, many have not had the opportunity to see, let alone work on the diferent containers that they may see each day traveling the tracks in their hometown,” says Forrest Wieder, training center general manager. “Each day the instructors work with them to build their knowledge and conidence so when they leave they have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to know when to act and when to wait for the assistance of the experts. hey leave knowing what to do safely and efectively and who to ask for help.” hat’s where safety has to begin: knowing what you don’t know. he training center had already established itself as the premier teaching facility for addressing derailments and unintentional releases on rails. But what about intentional ones? “[he training center] is a graduate-level school with over 300 years of combined training excellence in our instructional staf,” says Mike Cook, Hazardous Materials and Compliance and Training executive director. “[he center] now reaches internationally and has trained over 60,000 students. On day one, we have 40 students. On day ive, we have a 40-person team, and that team is part of our hazardous materials response family.” Ultimately, TTC will pave some areas of the training site and create intersections, as well as install street signs to better simulate real-life scenarios. But part of “real life” these days includes the threat of terrorism. hat’s why training center oicials in August
2007 began working toward getting federal grant funding and applying for a partnership with the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium. Other consortium members train civilians to respond to chemical weapon attacks, explosives, biomedical weaponry, national disasters, and the efects of nuclear weapons. Clearly, the training center’s expertise in educating civilians to respond to hazardous-material releases its right in.
ATTEMPTING TO TUNNEL TO TTC’S ROOTS In order to discover additional niches TTC might ill, managers and engineers hold brainstorming sessions. During one in early 2002, senior scientist John Tunna suggested tunnels as an area in which the tech center’s experts could help the industry. No hills or mountains? No problem. hey can build the tunnels above ground. One planned tunnel will be collapsible. Researchers will place railcars and locomotives inside, then release various materials used in the construction of tunnel interiors from the ceiling and sides so that engineers can learn how the diferent materials and rail equipment respond in a collapse. hen they’ll clean it out and restage the scene. Oicials also would like to build out a 1.5-mile stretch of tunnels from the existing transit loop, complete with two simulated www.TrainsMag.com
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Hazmat training students learn to repair valves at “Domehenge,” and on full-sized tank cars in background. TTC has every tank car hatch a firefighter is likely to encounter. Two photos, TR A I NS : Kathi Kube
A researcher holds up wheel profile gauges in front of a high speed turnout. Combined, researchers hope to learn more about wheel-rail interaction. TR A I NS : Steve Sweeney
A peek behind a staged derailment shows the true source of smoke and flames behind a wrecked tank car during one staged advanced tank car training drill.
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subway stations and a section with reinforced steel. he tunnels will have a two-fold use: evaluate tunnel construction materials and engineering principles in a variety of scenarios; and provide realistic simulations of anything that can happen in a tunnel, accidental or intentional. Training center staf would ofer courses to irst responders, transit employees, and anyone else who might come in contact with such situations. he tunnels would be fully equipped (like the hazmat training center’s tank cars) to simulate smoke, gasses, ire, and the ambient conditions in a tunnel deep underground or under water. “he customer needs are diverse,” says Ruben Peña, who handles government and security projects. “he goal is to make this the premier test and training center in the world.” To do so will take a good amount of money, but not as much as you might think. Just building the tunnels would cost about $18 million. Add in classrooms, a subway training facility, intermodal training facility, and an open-air passenger-rail derailment training site (similar to the hazmat training center’s freight version), and the cost rises to about $25 million. hat’s really not substantial, considering building just a substation to run third-rail power would cost as much — and TTC already has such a substation up and running. So now Peña is talking with federal agencies to try to secure funding through their various programs. Considering the site’s value to the safety and national security of the traveling public, you begin to see the wide range of federal programs that might contribute to the cause. So far, no money has been allocated to build the tunnels more than 10 years later. Just as the tech center began its existence as a line item in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s budget researching high speed rail, TTC is now completing its own loop, returning to a method of passenger transport that the nation wasn’t then ready to accept. Fortunately, TTC’s engineers have continued their work in passenger rail in the ensuing years. With the recent increased LIKE MUCH OF focus, oicials in early 2009 brought these various areas of THE RESEARCH related study into a single pasDONE HERE, IT senger rail business unit, and WAS A MATTER OF, directed Tunna to lead it. “My job is primarily to make sure ‘CAN IT BE DONE?’ the world knows our capabilities,” he says. hese capabilities include testing equipment (some of which is designed and built overseas) so the vehicles operate as expected on U.S. infrastructure and interact properly with power sources. “Here we can build track with various defects in it for testing,” Tunna says, “and do the same with track components and high speed switches.” His department can also help states ensure they have enough technical information to successfully apply for federal funding, and help the government evaluate and analyze the submissions. Other projects worth paying attention to include the center’s work on phased array ultrasonic inspection that would improve on single-frequency ixed rail defect detection and a rollingcontact fatigue simulator used to replicate the efects of work hardening on rails under heavy freight car loadings. Lisa Stabler, TTC’s president, says research at the secure and remote location does much to advance railroad safety and eiciency in North America, but there remains more to do. “here is always room for improvement,” Stabler says. “Until we have zero derailments, zero service interruptions, and zero early component replacements, our industry will always have room for improvement. Perfection is the goal. We won’t stop until the industry is there.”
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