Now and Then at the east portal of Alpine Tunnel

 Here was my attempt to take the same photo of the historical one. This is back in 2003, and my wife (who is standing where one of the trainmen did) and I were B&W photo fans.

Tank car coming to Como today!

Another type of rail car is coming to Como: a former White Pass & Yukon tank car. While it never ran on the C&S, it is very similar to the Conoco cars that did. The car was owned by Lindsey and Rosa Ashby. They recently donated it to the Como project. It was at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, but, as you can see in the photo below, had been pulled out earlier this week and readied for pickup. Plans include repainting in Conoco lettering.

The photo below is from Jeff Taylor and posted on the Denver South Park and Pacific Historical Society Facebook page. The plan is for it to move today, October 24, 2026.

On the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum, someone took a photo of the tank car being pulled by a truck, so the move did indeed occur!

Alpine Tunnel on Two Wheels

 I happened on the video below and thought it was worth sharing. Yes, it is a couple guys on electric dirt bikes, but they do a nice job showing the amazing scenery and engineering of the west side of Alpine/Altman Pass. It is peppered with occasional narration about the railroad and the facilities at the west portal. Some of it is a little off (i.e. the main freight hauled was coal not silver), but most is correct. Either way, it's always a joy to see this amazing line. The one part that saddens me is to see all the hard-won restoration work on the west portal facilities accomplished by Ray Rossman and the Passport In Time program slowly disintegrating. Their work, done from the 1990s through the early 2000s and building on past preservation efforts, revitalized so many of the ruins there. Now, however, paint is pealing, weather (and vandalism or, at least, carelessness) is taking its toll, and nature is again fighting to reclaim its place. 

Signs of Life on the Gunnison Branch, 1912-1915

There’s something exciting about activity on a dormant railroad track. A few such activities between 1912-1915 came to my attention recently related to the Gunnison branch. 

The first took place on the way to the east portal of Alpine Tunnel. The C&S sent its last train through the tunnel on November 10, 1910, though cleanup trains appear to have traveled through the bore in December. The track, however, stayed in place as the railroad didn’t actually abandon the route. Some have surmised that the C&S feared courts might order them to open the route again as happened when the railroad attempted to also shut down the Boreas Pass route around the same time.

C&S grade west of Hancock

For two years the track above Hancock lay dormant when the railroad needed a bit of 56 lb. rail, presumably to replace rail elsewhere on active track. In late summer, August 1912 the C&S sent a crew to pull up a half mile of 56 lb. rail a little west of Hancock. The curious part is that, even though the track there remained inactive, the crew replaced that half mile when they re-laid aged 35 lb. rail. 

The rail remained in place until 1924 when the railroad’s chosen contractor William Turner dismantled it. Good thing that it was still there for all those years because it allowed some local frivolity. 

As reported in a 1915 Buena Vista newspaper, in August a group of at least nine men and women were having some fun by riding a push car by gravity from the east portal of Alpine Tunnel downgrade to Romley. The track must have been clear enough to pull this off even after five years of disuse. Even if the track was in decent shape, it must have been an arduous task to get that car up the grade to the tunnel! 

The joyride took a turn when the man in charge of the brake, Rick Hagardane, lost control. In fear of careening off any of the many upcoming curves, an assayer on the ride by the last name of McCarry jumped into action, literally. He wrapped a rope around himself and jumped off the back to be a human brake. His hope was to slow the car enough to allow the women to jump off safely. 

Three women did jump and all got quite banged up with one breaking her collarbone. McCarry succeeded in eventually stopping the car after about a mile. The remaining passengers must have breathed quite a sigh of relief! Ironically, the ‘Human Brake’ McCarry only ended up with a few bruises. Some elements of this story seem like a “tall-tale”, but who knows? 

Garo 2017. By Jeffrey Beall - Own work,
CC BY 4.0

Lastly, a bit to the east of the above happenings, a three-mile stretch of inactive Gunnison branch track
came back to life briefly. After two years of inactivity, on the night of November 11, 1912, an Alma newspaper reported the C&S ran a train “up for Garo and handled ten cars of freight from Cohen’s spur.” During the intervening years, wires had even been put up across the tracks. The crew had to cut these to get the train through. Interestingly, the newspaper also stated, “There have been reports before that the railroad was running trains at night over parts of this road, but it has been impossible to learn anything definite until recently.”

Now, if we could just get someone to re-lay the Gunnison branch tracks again in 2026, what fun it would be! In the meantime, the good news is that it’s happening for real in the Como yards.

Grading on the old Gunnison branch in Como, 2021

You can see the Gunnison tracks in the top right corner, 2026

Both above photos are screenshots from videos on the Denver South Park & Pacific Historical Society Youtube channel.

Sources:

Historic Alpine Tunnel by Dow Helmers

The South Park Line: A Concise History, CO Rail Annual No. 12 by Gordon Chappell, Robert W. Richardson, and Cornelius Hauck

A Documentary History of the South Park Line: Vol. 5, The Gunnison District, Part II by Daniel W. Edwards

Views of C&S Rice Yard turntable and roundhouse (1)

 You can find a great album of 1988 photos of the old C&S Rice Yard roundhouse and turntable in Denver from the Historic-Structures website.

What happened to the C&S turntable in Chama?

After my previous post, there has been a lot of confusion as to the whereabouts of the former Denver Rice Yard C&S turntable that went to the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad in May 1997.

Here is an album showing the turntable in pieces in Chama in 1997. 

So far, it is clear that the turntable was never used. It was taken for use for a potential project that included rebuilding the Chama roundhouse. That project never occurred. Individuals on various forums think the turntable is still in Chama (in what is referred to as the 'swamp') while others think it may have been scrapped. 

Below are some excerpts from a 1997 C&TS Dispatch related to the turntable move.

"- heard that Elitch Gardens in Denver was making a 100-foot through-truss bridge turntable available at no cost other than freight from Denver to Chama. The turntable allows for a shallow pit and will be a key element in the roundhouse approach." 

Below is part of an article from the 1997 C&TS Dispatch explaining the roundhouse proposal and how the turntable could fit in with it.

The Denver C&S turntable's 1997 move to the C&TS

From the June 1997 Rocky Mountain Rail Report.