San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad May Have A Buyer But Questions Remain

SL&RG 1744 steams eastward into the sunrise toward La Veta Pass
Photo by Mike Danneman

After an auction ordered earlier this summer by a bankruptcy judge, the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad, operating for years without an owner in the San Luis Valley, may actually have new life and a new owner. Officials are quick to stress that nothing is final or binding, but the details are being ironed out with long-time Great Western Railway of Colorado owner OmniTrax. 

Another company, North Central Railcorp headed by Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, Inc. President Tim Tennant, has indicated its interest to Roni Wisdom, Alamosa County Administrator, and should be working with the court and trustees, says Alamosa News. 

Hopefully, in OmniTrax we have a clear winner. Even if we do, the possibility exists that if OmniTrax fails in the San Luis Valley, it could file to abandon the historic branch like it did recently. According to AlamosaNews.com, 

On Aug. 9, 2019 – just three years after purchasing the line – OmniTrax and CTXR petitioned STB to abandon the line, citing the loss of millions of dollars in acquiring and operating the line and asserting the cost of continuing to maintain and operate the line far outweighed the potential revenue from shippers. STB approved the petition, and the line was abandoned.

That is not to say that the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad would be in the same boat as the Central Texas and Colorado River (CTXR) Railroad, which was purchased by OmniTrax on the assumption demand for fracking sand would drive their railroad's profitability. When the demand didn't materialize in 2017, the railroad stalled. The San Luis & Rio Grande has the demand already in hand.

The rising sun glints off the special photo freight of the SL&RG
Photo by Mike Danneman

One question would be whether OmniTrax, if awarded the sale, can couple the existing demand for the valley's agriculture with its existing business model of rail-driven real estate. Having a client commit to using OmniTrax in the San Luis Valley would settle a lot of nerves. So would public funding or tax breaks to spur new business growth. But no one can expect either to show up on demand.

On the other hand, one thing is certain: If SL&RG were to shut down for any reason, Coors' Rocky Mountain barley and other clients' products would be forced over La Veta Pass via US 160, and I know from personal experience the highway would never handle such a load without tens or hundreds of millions of dollars spent to improve it. Thus, the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad had better keep those steel wheels rolling, whatever happens. We can't afford for it to stop. ⚒

POTD - Floating a K-37 Over the Animas At Tacoma

Today's Photo of the Day is by Kevin Madore, who a year ago today captured Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad's oil-fired K-37 493 as it crossed the Rio de las Animas at the Tacoma bridge. The way Mr. Madore used his wide angle to shape the scene it makes the thousands of pounds of steam and steel seem to float, barely touching the bridge. I know that every bolt is feeling the the heaviest of the Rio Grande's narrow-gauge (actually a former standard-gauge!) engine as it rolls across it, but somehow the wide angle view and the elevation makes the engine seem to glide across! 

In the right hands, photography is science and artistry coming together to create magic. Sometimes you can make the heaviest things float on air.⚒

Denver History Still Lives ...If You Know Where To Look

Baseball fans, especially Colorado Rockies fans, already know Coors Field is special. Constructed between 1993 and 1995, Coors Field--named in perpetuity for the beer that brought baseball here--became the cornerstone of a downtown Denver revitalization project, and its effects have not stopped for nearly 30 years! This is no booster speech; it is simply acknowledging a proven fact.

Without Coors Field, it's fair to say that businessmen and builders like former-Mayor-and-then-Governor John Hickenlooper would have had much more difficulty attracting investors and generating momentum for businesses and projects that got started or are now based out of lower downtown, LoDo to the locals. Without Coors Field, the renovation and redevelopment of Denver Union Station would probably never have happened. The FasTracks rail and transit project would have been more difficult to sell and Denver's suburbs would have been as isolated as they were in the 70s and 80s, and sprawling ever outward even more than they do today. LoDo is now synonymous with revitalized and reinvigorated urbanized living. The strong popularity of such a lifestyle has produced another re- adjective: regentrification. If you have lived anywhere in Colorado in the past 25 years, you have benefitted in some small way from this LoDo effect. 

All of these "re-s" have effects both bad and good. What's also apparent is that the optimism keeps popping up and spawning new challenges and opportunities. For example, I was more than a little unnerved by the relentless construction and development. Was no one going to remember the railroads of downtown or the Moffat Road depot or the lines that ran through Auraria? The viaducts or the Postal Annex, the yellow-bricked monstrosity that sat south of Union Station is gone, hauled away in 2005. What of the Denver of before?

It may not be possible to preserve everything, but we can still build with an eye to our past as well as the future. The Oxford is still with us. Denver's Union Station has never stopped serving all passenger trains climbing and descending to the Mile High City, save for a renovation. The Union Pacific Freight Office persists (at least outside) as the Denver Chop House. But I shuddered when I saw construction barricades going up right next to it. This was hallowed ground. This was where Gen. William J. Palmer laid the first rails of his beloved Baby Road, the narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. What were they doing to this spot? I didn't have far to look: McGregor Square.

Yes, the west corner of the giant Colorado Rockies-built development is built right off the spot in the street where Palmer spiked his rails. So imagine my surprise when I found that one of the establishments in the complex is called "Milepost Zero!" No! I thought, This can't be! Do they really know? And although it does not mention the Denver & Rio Grande or its later incarnations by name, their site says the following:

In Denver’s early days, the railroad became the center of everything. Across the street from what is now Coors Field was where the tracks began – mile post zero. Today, McGregor Square sits in the center of everything Denver has to offer.

It all starts here. Welcome to Milepost Zero.

Milepost Zero is the simply great, convenient choice in Denver’s Ballpark neighborhood. Your home-base for shopping, dining, entertainment, gameday, exploration and everything in between, Milepost Zero serves up something for everyone in the family.

Explore the concepts in our food hall, grab a drink at the bar or pour yourself a beer from our extensive Beer Wall selections. No matter what you’re in the mood for, you can enjoy your favorites in our expansive indoor space or outdoor plaza at the heart of McGregor Square. Catch the game on our giant outdoor plaza screen or just watch the action in the square while you fuel up or wind down. 

When I next visit Coors Field and hopefully watch a Rockies game, I plan to visit Milepost Zero and hopefully partake and imbibe. It's the least I could do for such a history-minded proprietorship, even if the prices are above and beyond what I would usually pay.⚒

Jim Wrinn, Passionate Advocate and Colorado Railfan, 61

This is a post I'd rather not write. I will keep it brief. 

Perhaps one of the greatest friends to the railroads of Colorado, indeed certainly to live outside of the state and within the last 30 years, has passed on March 30, 2022. Jim Wrinn, for 17 years Editor of Trains Magazine, had a long battle with pancreatic cancer before it stole him from our midst. I wish I could say this is the only friend I've lost to the monster, but I can't. It has the highest mortality rate of all the cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of just 11%, or 9 out of 10 diagnosed die within 5 years. 

Yes we all die. Yes, I believe that something wondrous and glorious awaits only some of us. I believe I will see him again. That doesn't take away the pain of goodbye. And certainly not someone who was generous with his time and energy to someone like me. We weren't that close, but he made me feel a part of his world, and that counts for a lot for someone disabled.

Jim was no stranger to the Antonito, to Durango, to Denver, or many of the points around and between. He realized a hope at the Victorian Iron Horse Roundup (archive) by re-enacting a shot from Trains' long past covers only last year (above). Had COVID delayed it again, he wouldn't have lived to see it. I am personally gratified it did not and he did.

His obituary at Trains contains the following quote of Fred W. Frailey:

“Every writer wants an editor, a boss, who says yes, . . . Forget what ‘yes’ means — it can mean anything. Jim Wrinn always said ‘yes,’ even when it was no because he made it seem like yes. I love the guy.”

Adios, my friend. ⚒

Trains 1963: D&RGW 3600's Out of Minturn

Mention Rio Grande steam in railfan circles and immediately what comes to most minds? The diminutive narrow gauge steamers of the Cumbres and Toltec or Durango and Silverton. Few think of the main line steam giants of Challengers, cousins of recently retired UP 3985, or mallets with massive 40-inch low pressure drivers living on as class L-96s. Indeed, half of the steam legacy of the Rio Grande has vanished like water vapor on the Colorado wind. It is the most vivid reason steam preservation programs continue to endure 80 years after the zenith of steam. Provide the experience of the raw power and romantic beauty of steam and watch it fire young imaginations!

Yet we do have some signs of the passing of standard gauge Rio Grande steam. Photos of brawny giants reside in collections large and small. One of the largest remains the Denver Public Library Western History Collection. No less beloved are books like the Colorado Railroad Museum's Rio Grande Locomotives and Robert LaMassena's  Denver & Rio Grande Western: Superpower Railroad of the Rockies published in 1999. 

Perhaps the most meaningful are the personal accounts like that of John Hill and Dave Straight from 2015. More widely known is a much younger Robert LaMassena's account of the 3600s Out of Minturn published by Trains in 1963. Reproduced here by permission, he recalls the run over the Continental Divide with peaches from Grand Junction and Palisade. On a side note, Palisade peaches are one of the most wonderful parts of late summer in Colorado, second only to the fall colors. I can remember with perfect clarity my most recent ripe peach from Grand Junction in all its giant, sweet, juice dribbling glory! They are incredible! If you are here in late August or early September, do not miss your opportunity to eat your fair share.

To read in full resolution, tap or click the image to view it

D&RGW 3600s Out of Minturn

by Robert A. LaMassena
Trains magazine, April 1963

Finally, this article was reproduced from Trains 1940 - 2010, but for access to thousands of other articles published since October 1940 to today's issue, all you need to do is subscribe to Trains with an Unlimited subscription. I'm finding my own self-paid subscription to Trains unlimited very handy. ⚒

Last Light at Palmer Lake

Here is just a quick highlight of a photo that looks so nice it's worth sharing. 

This photo of a BNSF GE unit at Palmer Lake is from Flickr user Bob, whose recent work on the Joint Line shows a good deal of promise. He shoots army tanks in the fog, too! If nothing else, his buying an SLR would not be wasted money! Great work, Bob! I hope to see more soon. ⚒

A Non-Travel Vlogger Takes Amtrak's Southwest Chief

I've been watching Alec, a vlogger--I hate using that word, but it is what it is, and his channel called Technology Connections for more than two years now. He has a knack for asking the questions I've always wondered about American technology like, 

• What's with the holes in the tines of US plugs? 
• Are extension cords more dangerous than we've been led to believe? Hint: yes! 🔌
• Are LED stop lights really that much better than incandescent? 🚦
• Why is High the first setting on most fans? 
• Was VHS actually superior to Beta? Oooh, he's meddling in an old format war! 📼

Alec took a cross-country trip on Amtrak this past August and, being an Amtrak newbie, he splurged and bought a roomette ticket. He admits he's not a railfan or a travel blogger, so it's not like he has all sorts of tips and tricks. You can get those elsewhere, one might hope, anyway. His route was from Chicagoland to sunny San Diego by way of LA and the Southwest Chief.

En route, Alec posed some very interesting thoughts and--this is why I watch him folks!--he nailed one of the main reasons why long distance rail has struggled in America. Nevermind that passenger rail was usurped by an independence-minded but vastly inefficient technology like rubber tires-on-asphalt. Nevermind that Amtrak was never supposed to make money--he got that right too, however. He said essentially that while the cost of a sleeper ticket is mostly out of the range of most Americans, additionally, working people in the USA are too time-poor to be able to splurge 3-5 days on travel. If you want to make a trip to the east or west coast from Colorado, you book it through DIA and not DUS not because "getting there is not half the fun!" but because your damnable HR policy only gives you one weeks vacation the first three years, if you're lucky! That's not right, and we all know it.

The USA is not in an emergency. We are not even trying to beat the Russians to the moon--we're just trying to get there sometime soon. We're not even trying to keep someone else from subjugating the world, like we did in WW2. We are working ourselves to the bone and why? Our kids need us. Our families need us. Our lives need us. We last added a day to the weekend over a century ago and productivity soared! Doing that again isn't a terrible idea. Certainly adding some more time off would help. 

I'm not saying we overturn society. I'm not advocating a shift to communism. I'm saying we need to give our employees time to live a life worthy of the effort of living. The rest of the world gives their employees a much more sane consideration. It's time we do too. Until we do, reasonable rail travel will continue to be a luxury and worse, society will continue to slide downhill. No, I am very serious.⚒

Further Reading:

• CNBC - How Far Behind America Is In Paid Time Off (2018)
• Workest - How Much is Average PTO in the U.S.? (2021)
• US Bureau of Labor and Statistics - Employer Costs for Employee Compensation by Region (2021)

Email Subscriber Notice

If you subscribe to Colorado Railroads by email, changes are coming. Our syndication is through Feedburner, once an independent company that, after being absorbed by Google, is scaling back its service to just an RSS service, without its helpful email administration. Blah blah blah, corporate-speak, technogargle technobabble blah. 

What this means is that until I find an e-mail service, probably something like Constant Contact, further email contact from Colorado Railroads may be in doubt. If you like what content I've been able to provide and want to keep hearing from me, please let me know. That way, whatever happens, I will be sure to keep you in the list. Hit reply or click here. I hope to hear from you soon!⚒

Steve Walden
editor, Colorado Railroads

POTD - Big Boy Under Threatening Skies

Photo of the Day: BUFFIE

Earlier this month, Union Pacific's Steam collective in Wyoming needed to stretch their Big Boy's legs before beginning their summer trip to New Orleans. A quiet trip to Denver seemed to be in order. Intrepid Denver-based rail photographer BUFFIE caught up with UP 4014 leaving Platteville on the trip back north to Cheyenne. The threatening skies and ideal lighting and classic black-and-white subject make it an easy candidate for Photo of the Day.⚒

Ask the Editor: Loops Like Tehachapi

It's been a while since we've done an Ask the Editor. Here's one from the e-mail bag, which lately has been overflowing.

Question

Last February, we had a chance to see the Tehachapi Loop in California. I'm told something similar is here in Colorado between I-70 near Wolcott and Steamboat Springs.  How would I find it?  Thanks, Ken Harris

Answer

Interesting! I think you might be referring to the loops near Bond. 

It does not loop over itself, but it does use some significant grade and reversing loops to "cut the contours" or gain elevation. This was part of the Moffat Road beyond the Dotsero Cutoff, which was built by the Rio Grande after they bought up the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad as a means of shortening their Denver to Salt Lake City mileage.

If you hadn't prefaced it with the Wolcott to Steamboat location, I might have just assumed you were being pointed at the Georgetown Loop!⚒

Commemorating the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad's 150th Anniversary

Over 150 years ago, on October 27, 1870, civil war General William Jackson Palmer and his associates filed papers incorporating his baby railroad in the territories of Colorado and New Mexico. Thus, on paper at least, the Rio Grande, a narrow-gauge startup of a railroad had been born. Any outward symbol of its birth, however, would have to wait while Palmer and his associates like William Bell raised investor funds to begin building.

Gen. William J. Palmer statue outside his namesake high school, August 1980

With General Palmer astride his iron steed in statue above Colorado Springs' main thoroughfare, it's easy to forget that this man wasn't yet 35 years old when he was working the difficult task of convincing investors to part with their funds to raise capital. General Palmer was a former spy, adept at making others believe he was in their confidence. Often the difference between this man and a shifty crook like Soapy Smith is simply the ultimate intentions of the man's heart, to deprive for selfish improvement or for benevolent investment.

Thankfully, Palmer was a man worthy of his Queen, a nickname Mary Lincoln Mellen had already earned by the time she met her future husband. Palmer began to share his vision for the Denver & Rio Grande with his beloved in their correspondence. On January 17, 1870, Palmer wrote to her,

I had a dream last evening while sitting in the gloaming at the car window. I mean a wide-awake dream. Shall I tell it to you? 

I thought how fine it would be to have a little railroad a few hundred miles in length, all under one's own control with one's friends, to have no jealousies and contests and differing policies, but to be able to carry out unimpeded and harmoniously one's views in regard to what ought and ought not to be done. In this ideal railroad all my friends should be interested, the most fitting men should be chosen for different positions, and all would work heartedly and unitedly towards the common end.

From there, he went on to detail an ambitious business plan with specific men to fill out all the critical functions of a railroad, informed by his work experience laying the route of the Kansas Pacific to Denver. Whatever idealism he held from that nearly rapturous dream, it obviously fueled his efforts for the next 18 months until driving the first spike for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad on July 28, 1871 between 19th and 20th Streets in Denver, much in line with Wynkoop. This places it right next to the Chop House Brewery (the former Union Pacific freight offices) near Coors Field in LoDo. 

Dreams, like buildings, take a long time to build to make them last. Foundations are critical, and yet none but a few will ever see what the entire building and the day's occupants completely rely upon. Be thankful for the diligent yet incredible work of Palmer and those like him, founding the Rio Grande and the city of Colorado Springs, while these two entities, changing and growing and enduring all the while, still sustain Colorado and the west today.⚒

Suits Filed Anticipating Tennessee Pass Activation

Well, that didn't take long.

Proving that there is nothing new under the sun, the action announced on the 31st of December, 2020, Rio Grande Pacific To Lease Tennessee Pass Route, became the subject of at least two separate suits filed by lawyers whose interest in what's best for Colorado is dubious at best. The Union Pacific and Rio Grande Pacific most likely expected this knee-jerk reaction.

The Town of Avon and Eagle County have both agreed to split the cost of a challenge filed with the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Apparently, the occupants of the town and county are already convinced that the rails are mere days away from coursing with crude oil. The idea that the company doesn't want to haul crude and instead haul other freight and possibly provide a commuter service to towns along the line like the one they already conduct in Texas seems to fall on deaf ears.

The second suit comes in a January 8th filing with the STB. A corporation that was seeking to use the Tennessee Pass Route for their own purposes argued the STB should reject the Union Pacific's right to reactivate the line. That corporation is the similarly named Colorado Pacific Railroad, owned by eastern Colorado billionaire businessman Stefan Soloviev's KCVN, LLC. They are the owners of the Towner Line and most recently they failed to force UP to sell the Tennessee Pass route to them. They apparently have no corporate railroad presence on the web.

The STB is limited in what it can and can't decide. According to the Colorado Sun, 

Michael Booth, a spokesman for the Surface Transportation Board, said the board operates like a court, with strict parameters for approving or rejecting rail plans. The board’s goal is to insure [sic] rail traffic rolls smoothly and that competitive issues are resolved, Booth said. It doesn’t have a lot of leeway for rejecting plans by an operator who promises to fix up a critical corridor that has been neglected for decades.

“We have limited jurisdiction to decide economic regulatory affairs,” Booth said. “The board’s concern is mainly, ‘Does the line serve a public purpose?’” 

The Colorado Sun article continues, 

Before trains roll over Tennessee Pass, there will be much more review and studies by a host of local, state and regional authorities, including the Forest Service and Colorado Department of Transportation. The transportation board is a first step in what will be a long process.

The length of time reactivating this line is something that all parties must be prepared for. It is going to take some time to understand what activating the line means and doesn't mean for everyone involved. Pueblo alone will find its future a little brighter by becoming a junction again and not merely a stop on the Front Range. 

More importantly, if the Tennessee Pass route is rehabilitated, it will be updated and upgraded with Positive Train Control, a much safer means of controlling rail movements than the CTC-based approach that was in place in 1997 when the line was inactivated.⚒