POTD - Theme of the Week - Tennessee Pass

This fourth week of August, our POTD theme is Tennessee Pass. I know that a lot of folks would like to see the line return to service. Conversely, I know a lot of Eagle valley residents would just as soon it never run again. Yet Minturn was a railroad town from the start, and that's where we start today. Tomorrow, we'll visit Eagle.

EMD SD45 #5319 pulls into Minturn, a crew change point, on 11/12/76.
Rebuilt to SD40M-2 by MK Rail, she now works for the UP as 4704.
Photo: John Carr, CarrTracks Data: UtahRails.Net

Colorado Railroad Museum To Lay 300 Feet of Track August 27th

This next Saturday, August 27th, Colorado Railroad Museum will be laying 300 feet of track in one day, with some help. Here's the news straight from the Telegrapher,

FasTracks West Rail Line Contractors and Denver Transit Construction Group are donating all the materials, including track, ties, and ballast, equipment, and labor to build 300 feet of standard gauge track in a single day.

POTD - 737 Fuselages Rolling On Steel Wheels Make a Sight

There's something about loading a main battle tank on a plane, or a train crossing a bay by ferry, or more commonly, containers shifting from ship to train to tractor-trailer. It's a mixing of modes, showing that one mode just isn't going to make it all the way there. A hatch of 737-8 fuselages, still fetal but leaving no guess as to what they are, traveling by train is perhaps the oddest pairing. Rails are extremely efficient, yet confined to the path laid down. Jet flight is very inefficient but offers freedom in all 3 dimensions, yaw, pitch and roll. Juxtaposing the two is our Picture of the Day.

Boeing's latest iteration of the venerable 737 makes it's journey from Kansas City
to Denver strapped securely aboard the spacious and quiet flatbed cars of BNSF
Photo: Joe Blackwell

I'm Still Gathering Steam

Well, guys and gals, I'm still catching up from this weekend. Sorry there is no POTD yesterday or today. I don't travel well like I used to, so what looked like a simple trip on Sunday afternoon became something I needed all of yesterday to recover from. It's very frustrating, but it can't be helped, I guess. Thanks for your patience while I gather some steam to tackle the rest of the week.

POTD - Silent Testimony in Buena Vista

Editors note: POTD continues, but after today, most will have a photo and a brief caption without the essay. Essays need to be fact-checked for accuracy, each of which can require significant blocks of time.

Life in Buena Vista since 1997 has been considerably quieter than the previous century, thanks to the Union Pacific's decision to mothball the Tennessee Pass route in favor of the Moffat Tunnel route. It's been considerably cleaner, as well. In the 40s and 50s, the Rio Grande's monster steam engines caused a smoky haze to hang over the entire Arkansas River valley, causing respiratory issues for soldiers training at nearby Camp Hale.

Such days seem foreign to the summer scene below captured by Adam Lutt. The Rio Grande bridge has eluded the paint cans of Southern Pacific and--thus far--Union Pacific. The former main line has sat dormant for so long that nearly all the kids in this scene have never seen a coal or TOFC unit train come through this valley. The thrum of diesel engines, the rumble of a rail grinder, and the chuffing of iron horses are all as foreign as can be from this simple day playing in the creek, their echo fading from human memory as the paint slowly fades from the bridge above. It's only a matter of time before the railroad vanishes completely from Tennessee Pass, a matter of time, and money, unless a client develops on these once-heavily traveled rails or Union Pacific gets serious about preserving and maintaining their future options. Yet if they do, they could just as easily paint over the bridge's Rio Grande lettering altogether, disturbing the nostalgic reverie of Grande Fans like me.

I think I'll go skip a rock.

Locals and their guests play beneath a railroad bridge of the Rio Grande in a tame
and cool Arkansas River in Buena Vista, strictly a summer activity in Chaffee County
Photo: Adam Lutt

POTD - Big Ten 16 Years Ago

Denver's altitude is 5,280 feet above sea level, earning it the obvious moniker, the Mile High City. The railroad route directly west was built as Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railroad and came to be owned by its successors, Denver & Salt Lake Railroad and Denver & Salt Lake Railway, as well as Denver & Rio Grande Western, Southern Pacific, and lately, Union Pacific through a series of mergers. It's apex was first at Rollins (Corona) Pass at 11,680 feet ASL and then inside  Moffat Tunnel at 9,239 feet. Making up the difference (6400 and 3959 feet respectively) while at the same time keeping the gradient manageable and cost efficient was a balancing act that meant gaining altitude as evenly as possible. If there was a ramp of earth, much like Sherman Hill in Wyoming, the construction engineers would have had little trouble. As it was, construction from Denver into the foothills was the most difficult part. They had to claw and scrape for elevation to reach Boulder Canyon and the Flatirons. A tongue of land jutting out from the foothills became the stepping stone between the western high plains and the east face of the Rocky Mountains. The long, winding turns climbing onto and upon the butte are both ten degrees curvature, thus named the little ten and big ten curves.

On April 8, 1995, a Southern Pacific coal train descends through Big Ten and
approaches Little Ten curves west of Denver, 18 months before the UP merger
Photo: Rolf Stumpf

POTD - Westward To Adventure and the Unknown

Living on the Front Range of Colorado, it's possible to take for granted the access to so many wonderful, scenic places. Having been to most of them (and loving almost every time), I miss the sense of adventure I had as a child, the feeling of going to an unknown place. Someday, though, I'm going to travel to someplace I've never been before, and I'm going to feel like a little kid all over again.

The photographer's daughter, Bella, watches the scenery change in front of
her as Amtrak #5 carries them westward through tunnels toward adventure
Photo: Kevin Morgan

POTD - Isolated in Leadville

The last remnant of the Denver, South Park and Pacific being operated today is the Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad. From 1899, it was part of the C&S consolidation of narrow gauge lines--the ones not associated with Rio Grande. In the 40s, the line was standard gauged, operating for a short time with 4 rails to prevent any service disruption. From the 40s to the 60s, C&S #641 moved cars from the Climax mine at the top of Fremont Pass down to the connection with Rio Grande outside Leadville. After 641 retired, she was put on display in Leadville while a Burlington Northern road switcher took over her duties.

Colorado & Southern standard gauge steamer rests outside the Leadville,
Colorado & Southern depot in Leadville, Colorado one hot day in August 1999
Photo: Jeff Jordan

POTD - Fort Collins Municipal Railway's Birney Car 21

Before T-Rex, before Light Rail, even before buses, there were street cars. If a town had any aspirations of being a city of some importance, one of the first items on the agenda was creating a municipal railway or other rapid transit. It was a mark of distinction to have a trolley system and the bigger and more refined it was, the better the populace felt about the city.

Then, depending on who you listen to, it seems a motor company decided it wanted to sell buses. The best way to do that was to buy up municipal railways and discard them as soon as possible, doing away with the efficient steel wheel on steel rail and electric power in favor of inefficient rubber tires on asphalt and gasoline power that was cheap as dirt. No more yellow trolleys in Denver. Done to death are the streetcars of Trinidad and Colorado Springs. But a single flickering flame in Fort Collins survived.

Kept by volunteers, the Fort Collins Municipal Railway plies Mountain Avenue, connecting City Park with the central business district on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays during the summer months. There once was much more to this municipal railway, but it's lost to the march of time and mankind's notion of progress in the 1950s. It once crossed the rails of the Colorado Central (now BNSF), and traveled in a loop, from Mountain and College, east to Peterson, south to Magnolia, east to Whedbee, south to Pitkin and Ft Collins High School, west to College and back north to Mountain. It covered a lot of ground and, had it survived intact, it would be an even greater asset to Fort Collins than it is today.

Ft Collins Municipal Railway #21 makes its familiar trip down Mountain Avenue
passing the siding at Mack Street, long out of service, on July 23, 2011.
Photo: James E. House

Railroad Yards Contain Locomotives, Rolling Stock, and Danger

BNSF Police
shoulder patch

As a railfan just 15 years ago, it was hard for me to appreciate the railroads' point of view when it came to allowing access to their yard. I can remember at least one encounter when, looking into a railroad policeman's eyes, I could tell what frustration and anger my "idiocy" had caused. Moments before, I felt I was safe because it was a hot summer day and no one was out there making any moves. No one except the police man, I found out. His face reminded me of how my father's looked when I had one time wandered into danger. I didn't enjoy either experience.

Railroad Radio in Colorado

If you've never listened to Railroad Radio, you've missed an opportunity to learn all about how freight moves in Colorado. It takes a bit of patience and knowledge of the nature of railroad operations, but, having it on in the background, you'd be surprised what you can pick up.

It's also a good indicator, given how expensive gas is recently, of how busy these rail routes are on a given day. Careful listening will help you know where the trains are, and how likely a photo run will produce good results.

All three live audio feeds are linked below and in the near column.

Railroad Radio in Colorado

• BNSF Front Range Sub - Denver to Cheyenne
• BNSF/UP Joint Line - Denver to Pueblo
• UP Moffat Line - Winter Park to Tabernash

 

POTD - D&RGW 315 Leads the Parade of Trains

Denver & Rio Grande Western Consolidation 2-8-0 pulls the first of several
trains into the depot at Durango during Railfest on August 21, 2010
Photo: Kevin Madore