Showing posts with label abandoned right-of-way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abandoned right-of-way. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Of Lines Loved and Lost

For Christmas, I received Narrow Gauge in the Rockies by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, sixth printing, first published in 1958. It is illustrated with photos from W.H. Jackson, Otto Perry, and Richard Kindig, and paintings by Howard Fogg. Its pages are flowing with history and elaborate, almost florid accounts of life surrounding the narrow gauge in Colorado. Its foreword speaks of the narrow gauge railfan as if they were the Hebrews of old, saying,
To perpetuate the memory of the narrow gauges a generation that would gladly exchange the com­forts of here and now for yesterday in Boreas Pass has taken steps that stand as a testament of de­votion without parallel among other antiquar­ians no matter how dedicated. The Rocky Mount­ain Railroad Club tells their story in volumes that only a toler­ably strong man may heft; there is a Narrow Gauge Museum and Motel at Alamosa toward which dedi­cated railroad buffs every­where as Moslems [sic] toward Mec­ca; there is a periodical devoted solely to narrow gauge tidings which is the de­votion­al reading of The Faith­ful, and there are narrow gauge books, pamph­lets, post cards, ex­cursions, engine models, book ends, beer mugs, paperweights and pictured likenesses of the cars beyond all counting. To have ridden the San Juan or the Silverton Train is a greater experience than to have seen Shelley plain. The Faithful sigh for the snowsheds of Lizard Head and by the waters of Gunnison they sat them down and wept.
Even though it's a bit ostentatious and maybe pretentious in its prose, I can't help but see myself in this paragraph. I have indeed turned myself toward Golden (now where the said Museum and former-motel owner moved from Alamosa), bought countless mementos, ridden the Silverton Train and the surviving portion of the San Juan each many times over. I mourned the loss of the Rio Grande Southern while walking Lizard Head Pass and sat in the depths of the Gunnison and--I kid you not--wept bitter tears silently by its banks that the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge is no more.

Am I embarrassed to admit to those tears? No. Those who don't understand the loss and share in the grief have my pity. Furthermore, for all the faults, both real and perceived, the days of yesterday contained, they also had gems, real and perceived, that today's progressed people have never experienced. It is truly a loss that our forebears did not retain them.

Nonetheless, I cannot stand in judgment of those who failed to keep those lost treasures, for one by one, other, non-narrow gauge lines are similarly dying in front of our eyes with only a little interest shown in preserving them. I am thinking chiefly of the Tennessee Pass line from Pueblo all the way to Dotsero. It is more than 21 years after seeing its last through revenue train, and the line is suffering from profound neglect.

This may be just my own opinion, but it seems Union Pacific cares little for jobs or industry in Salida, Leadville or Minturn. With the closure of Burnham and other points and routes, it's easy to think that the suits sitting in UP headquarters wonder why all jobs can't be based in Omaha, Seattle and San Diego. It's highly doubtful we would fare better with CSX or NS, were they to merge with the UP.

I believe the citizens of Colorado and her government need to be able and willing to use their powers to preserve the thoroughfares built and maintained by generations before so that the means of moving people and goods through Colorado does not waste away. Even the Moffat Route is not impervious to the forces of consolidation and removal. Am I looking at a future in which Granby and Craig sit isolated like Gunnison and Dolores and the Moffat Tunnel lies in ruins like the Alpine Tunnel? I sincerely hope not.⚒


Beebe, L., & Clegg, C. (1970). Narrow gauge in the Rockies. Berkeley, Calif: Howell-North

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Ask the Editor: Can I Get From Vail to Denver Using Old Rails?

One of the first questions I received using the Ask the Editor form is from Tim S. of Sydney, Australia who asks,

"Is it possible to get from Vail to Denver using old rails?"

Vail ski area
Vail ski area, photo by David Benbennick
Here's my answer,
Hi Tim!

Good to hear from you via the site! I'd be happy to answer your question and if I don't quite answer your question or you have follow-up questions, please let me know!

First, a qualification. You don't mention the means you'd be traveling so I'll be just talking routes, not actual access to travel the routes. Any properties as well as your legal access to them are yours to discover and arrange, meaning none of what I say should be taken as an endorsement to pursue any activity, legal or otherwise.

Colorado's main expansion and consolidation of railroads happened between 1872 and 1917. Skiing, Vail's reason for being, did exist in a primitive way toward the end of that period, but didn't take off until after WW2. Vail as a town isn't much older than I am, incorporated in 1966, the ski area having been there for since 1962. So, if there was ever rail service near Vail, it would have been by coincidence, not by design of serving Vail.



The route over Vail Pass is the most direct candidate for a rail route to Denver. But it was completed in 1940 when the original US 6 was pushed through to Utah on it's way from Massachusetts to California. The grades over Vail Pass, at present, would be pushing the limits of rail technology. It would be very difficult without changing the route or the design of conventional rail travel.

The other direction out of the Vail Valley comes out at where Gore Creek flows into the Eagle River which is followed by the Tennessee Pass Route of the Rio Grande, the railroad that inspired the graphics for Colorado Railroads. It would be possible to follow that route all the way over Tennessee Pass and down the Arkansas River to Pueblo. That route has been out of service since 1997 (18 years this fall). Pueblo to Denver has been in active rail service since 1872, or thereabout. At present, Union Pacific owns both routes, in whole for TP and in part for the Front Range.

If you are interested in older routes, or in narrow gauge railroads that served nearly all the towns except Vail, I can go into further detail.

Keep Exploring!

Steve
If you have a question for the editor, please use the form in the near column or send an e-mail to editor@corailroads.com

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

POTD: Ghost Echoes of Steam Whistles Where Sunsets and Aspen Leaves Fall

You never know where you're going to run into a railroad. On the west side of Boreas Pass, not far from the roadbed of the Denver, South Park & Pacific narrow gauge railroad, Chris May took this beautiful sunset photograph of fall aspens and what I suspect to be Mount Lincoln, if not Quandary Peak, both 14ers above the fine resort town of Breckenridge.

Sunset - Boreas Pass, CO
Very little could seem to have changed from this sunset over Boreas Pass
to the time when the first steam whistles echoed over the Blue River Valley.
Photo: Christopher J. May
It could seem that the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, later the Denver Leadville & Gunnison and then Colorado & Southern, is one of the "other" Colorado narrow gauge railroads, meaning not Denver & Rio Grande Western or Rio Grande Southern, two of the longest lived, most spectacular and most expansive narrow gauge railroads in America. But to think that they're the only roads would seem ...well, narrow minded.

The South Park, as it's called familiar, was considered a rival railroad to the Rio Grande for many years. Departing Denver for Waterton Canyon, it wended its way into its eponymous park by Kenosha Pass, where it built a roundhouse that still stands in Como. From there, a branch sprung across the Continental Divide over Boreas Pass to tap the mining towns of Breckenridge, Dillon, and a small mining hamlet called Keystone in Summit County.◊

Further Information

DSP&P Historical Society
DSP&P on Wikipedia
DSP&P for modelers