Rio Grande Pacific To Lease Tennessee Pass Route

One last post to close out 2020. And boy, is it big news!

A group known as Rio Grande Pacific is going to lease the Tennessee Pass Route from Union Pacific. Both Trains and Railfan & Railroad announced the news today. 

Railfan & Railroad stated,

According to a press release, Rio Grande Pacific subsidiary, Colorado Midland & Pacific Railway (CMP), will lease a majority of the line and file for common-carrier authority with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to operate it. Officials said that CMP will “assess the interest of the communities served by the Tennessee Pass line” for both freight and passenger service. 

Trains followed with more details from the STB filing:

The Colorado Midland & Pacific filing to the STB says the railroad will lease 163.1 miles of the line between milepost 171.9 at Parkdale, Colo., and Milepost 335.0 near Sage, Colo., and that it projects the railroad’s annual revenue will not exceed $5 million. The portion of the line east of Parkdale is currently operated by short line Rock & Rail, and also hosts the Royal Gorge Route Railroad tourist operation.

Rio Grande Pacific is based out of Benbrook, a suburb of Ft. Worth, Texas. 

With no traffic over the railroad for over 20 years now, my guess is that at least three months are going to be spent rehabilitating the line. The line has been stripped of most of its copper and any other valuable metals by vandals during the gap in operations. It's more likely, with the new PTC standards, that the entire line will be rewired. 

Questions about passenger service and other meaningful commodities still need to be assessed by the new company, but their associated transit company would certainly be involved. Commuter service to Dowd Junction for Vail would certainly bring a great deal of help for those who work in the ski industry and the associated services like food and hospitality. It may eventually even raise property values all along the line to accommodate those workers. The Vail news site Real Vail has more on these contingencies.

Stay tuned!⚒

Video: Alpine Tunnel by Drone

One area of lasting interest by railfans and historians in Colorado is Alpine Tunnel. Built by the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad in 1881, it connected Denver and locally Leadville with Gunnison, reaching the station on the west side of town in 1882.¹ Crossing beneath the Continental Divide, the tunnel carried traffic in all seasons until the line was abandoned just 28 years later in 1910 by the Colorado & Southern after a partial cave-in. The Denver & Rio Grande, having connected Denver to Leadville and across Marshall Pass to Gunnison, had siphoned away most of the business between these points. 

This video by YouTube member Searching for the C&S narrow gauge is of such good quality, I had to share it. It has almost a Google Earth-like quality to it, showing the west portal and climbing high to peek over the Continental Divide at the approach to east portal while remaining over the west side. It is a unique and compelling viewpoint that until recently was impossible to get in such detail and resolution. Frankly, I was amazed to see so little vibration or wind for such a high and weather-intense location.

As you can see from the video above and this look at the east portal, the portals have both collapsed long ago, sealing off the tunnel itself from any would-be explorers. Nonetheless, the site attracts visitors from June into September each year. All other times, it is covered in snow, often dozens of feet deep. ⚒

¹ Colorado Railroads by Tivis Wilkins, Pruett Publishing

Class 1 Railroading in 1982

The illustrious David P. Morgan, longtime editor of Trains Magazine wrote towards the end of his time in 1982 about what constitutes a Class 1 Railroad in the United States. In 2020, we have just 5 railroads functioning in a semi-national capacity. In 1982, it was a much more interesting question. 

His January 1982 column, "How Many Class 1s?" states, 

For all practical purposes, there are officially 39 railroads in the United States. . . .  [They] employ 92 per cent of American railroaders, operate 94 per cent of rail mileage, and handle 98 per cent of rail traffic. These 39 are the Class 1 (annual gross revenues of 50 million dollars or more) line-haul railroads

Of the roads he goes on to list, fully 7 of them were active in Colorado at the time of his writing: 

• Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
• Burlington Northern 
• Colorado & Southern 
• Denver & Rio Grande Western
• Missouri Pacific (soon to merge with UP)
• National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak)
• Union Pacific

Morgan continued his analysis, weeding out railroads like the C&S, which would be absorbed into BN later that year and concluded, "Now we have, in effect 17 Class 1's--less than half the number we started with..." Burlington Northern, Rio Grande, Santa Fe, Union Pacific were the Colorado railroads included. He reduced the number even further by saying "75 per cent of the Class 1 route-miles of the country are controlled, or predictably will be, by just seven camps:" ATSF, BN and UP were in Colorado at the time. He concludes, 

In sum, we have far fewer railroads in the U.S. than the number that appears at first blush, although in terms of the world (2 roads in Canada, 1 in Mexico, and of course 1 each in France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, U.K., etc.) we have a distance to go, particularly in view of the fact that 154 years after B&O's charter we still do not possess rails under one flag linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Well sir, if you're looking for a monolithic rail structure in America, it still hasn't arrived 38 years later, a whopping 192 years in total! Although, thanks to a round of mergers in the 1990s, we have today 2 Class 1 freight railroads in Colorado. Neither of which seem to have a vested interest in the state as the Rio Grande did back in 1982. ⚒

Wrinn: Rio Grande Southern 20 and the Long Slow Road To Steam

Jim Wrinn, editor of Trains Magazine recently talked shop about Rio Grande Southern engine 20 and what the expectations are with the restoration. Let's face it: The engine has been in "restoration" since George W. Bush was in office. Will we see it in steam soon? It could happen next year. 

The Colorado Railroad Museum is restoring a legendary Centennial State narrow gauge locomotive to operation. Rio Grande Southern No. 20, a 3-foot gauge 4-6-0 built in 1899 for the Florence & Cripple Creek and last run in 1951 when the RGS shut down, is nearing completion. Schenectady Locomotive Works built the engine, and the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club saved the engine. In 2006, the club transferred ownership to the museum, and a significant donation began a restoration the following year. For 12 years, the engine was under restoration at Pennsylvania’s Strasburg Rail Road, and it returned last June for final assembly. The $1.5 million restoration is one of the most remarkable in the annals of American railway preservation. We checked in with Colorado Railroad Museum Curator of Rolling Stock & Equipment Jeff Taylor earlier this week. Here’s our Q&A with Trains.

Jim's blog continues at Trains.⚒

Denver's Welcome Mizpah Arch

Before "Blucifer the demon horse" of DIA neighed its welcome (of sorts) to visitors driving in and out of the world's largest airport, there was a public art installation that welcomed Denver's visitors in a singularly unique way that has never been duplicated since. Denver's Welcome Arch, also known as the Mizpah Arch, stood for years a century ago outside Denver's Union Station at 17th and Wynkoop Streets.

Photo: DPL-WHG

Dedicated on Independence Day, July 4, 1906, the arch was "to stand for the ages as an expression of the love, good wishes, and kind feeling of the citizens to the stranger who enters our gates," according to Mayor Robert Speer. On installation, both sides read "WELCOME" in big bold letters. After the dedication, it seemed that folks approaching the station from the city were being welcomed to leave. Rather than leave that parting impression of good riddance, the letters on the city's side of the arch were changed in 1908. Rather than say goodbye or the like, which again could be a dubious parting word, the word selected was "MIZPAH," a salutation in Hebrew taken from Genesis 31:49, which says,

It was also called Mizpah, because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other...

The idea was to invoke a blessing on those saying goodbye to Denver and a hope of a return.

Photo: DPL-WHG

History of the arch itself is not very plentiful, but Denver's Railroads by Forrest and Albi has a small section from which a lot of this post is based. The arch had a double tracked Denver Tramway line passing through it from the outset. When the second terminal building was obliterated in September 1914 to make room for the current structure, the track was apparently re-routed to the west. The entire arch was supposed to be removed with construction of the center terminal, but it stayed on for 15 more years, and in the 20s was lit with electric lights in keeping with the times.

During its brief existence, the arch was not above being used for commercial use. Of note, the Struby-Estabrook Mercantile Company, before national--let alone international--grocery chains, used the Welcome Arch as a trademark for its line of products. Everything from macaroni to coffee and tea to oats and canned goods rolled out the doors of the mercantile stores with a likeness of the arch on it.

Alas, by 1929, the arch was showing its age. It had not been well maintained, and with the stock market crash that October and the ensuing Great Depression, an overhaul was not in the cards. Charles D. Vail (of Vail Pass), working for the city at the time, wrote that the arch would have to be completely rebuilt if it were to stay in the same spot, and as Vail had seen the future of Colorado in the automobile, the arch was cited as a traffic hazard and a blight on the station. The arch was removed at the city's expense on December 6, 1931.

It has not been completely forgotten, either. I remember my friend Ira, a New Yorker and proud Jew pointing to signs in a newly revitalized LoDo after a Colorado Rockies game emblazoned with Mizpah as a nod to the arch 70 years after its passing. It's a good memory of a friend now long past.⚒

The Beginning of the End for UP 3985

Challenger 3985 charges south with the Circus Train toward Denver September 28, 2010
Photo: John H. Hill

While fans of the Union Pacific come down from the high of their inaugural season of Big Boy 4014, it cannot be all good news coming from Cheyenne, the heart of UP Steam just over the border in Wyoming. UP announced their intention to retire Challenger-type 3985, the other articulated steam locomotive inhabiting the UP Steam shops.

Built in July 1943 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and retired by UP in 1962, the 4-6-6-4 Challenger was restored as a volunteer-initiated project back in 1979. Returned to service with UP in April 1981 and converted to oil in 1990, it held the title of world's largest operating steam locomotive until the return of Big Boy 4014 in May 2019, although its last active run was in October 2010.

Why not keep her running? Apart from UP Steam having its hands full with 844 and 4014, the other two big steam engines, 3985 was looking at a long and extensive restoration. According to Kevin P. Keefe, "Such are the consequences of running the wheels off it," since its return to service. Weighing this against the decreased demand, there's just not that much reason to keep her active.

Nonetheless, any time a steamer goes silent, it's a sad day for the railfan. Like Keefe, I feel a need to honor the Challenger. Keefe says,

With all due respect to N&W 2-6-6-4 No. 1218 and its brethren, I can’t see how UP’s 4-6-6-4s cannot be considered the world’s most successful simple articulateds, given their sterling dual-service operational record on UP, not to mention how they begat near-carbon-copies on Clinchfield, D&H, Northern Pacific, and SP&S.

Those near-carbon-copies on Clinchfield? They were delivered to the Rio Grande as their L-97 class, numbered 3800-3805 in May and June 1943. They served until 1947 when the D&RGW sold them to the Clinchfield, renumbering them 670-675.¹ The Rio Grande didn't actually want the Challengers, either. They wanted 5 more Baldwin 4-6-6-4s (Class L-105), but the War Production board assigned the Alcos by tacking them on to the Union Pacific's order. The Rio Grande opted not to buy them, instead leasing them from the Defense Plant Corporation. They were, in 1943, the last new steam engines the Rio Grande ever received.² So, for many born after 1950, the Challenger a way for us to witness, perhaps unwittingly, the Rio Grande's main line steam in the post-war years.

Let us remember perhaps the most important aspect of the Challenger's story: the volunteer initiative to restore it to service. Few at Union Pacific saw the advantages of full restoration except these volunteers. The uses of old steamers was limited to park centerpieces to bolster civic pride. The public perception was that railroads were profit-shy and mired in regulation and bureaucracy. Additionally, eight years earlier, Amtrak had removed the last point of contact of the Union Pacific with the American public. Aside from delaying drivers at grade crossings, there was no reminder to the public of the services the railroad provided to the public. It's not a huge stretch to say that without the volunteers stepping forward, Union Pacific's public image would be far less than it is today.

While an ending, this is not necessarily the utter end for 3985. Challenger will sit in the Cheyenne roundhouse alongside her stablemates for the foreseeable future. It costs very little to preserve a steam locomotive already sheltered from the elements. Perchance it might cost little more if a slow, paced restoration was quietly undertaken? Perhaps in another 20 years, we may see the need for three steam locomotives in the steam program. It's always a possibility, especially if UP continues using steam to power its public relations.⚒

References
¹ Locomotives of the Rio Grande by the Colorado Railroad Museum p.59
² Rio Grande: To the Pacific! by Robert LaMassena p.160

UP Steam #3985 Fact Sheet
Wikipedia