East Portal of Alpine Tunnel & Romley Bridge 1992 video

In 1992 my parents took me and my brother to the east portal of Alpine Tunnel for the first time.

We lugged our Panasonic VHS-C camcorder up to the tunnel entrance and I took some video of the tip of the portal's redwood frame.  One could still see into the top a short bit, though most was filled with rockfall.  Sadly, this is now forever lost from view as the remains of the face of east portal collapsed some time later.

The second portion of the video shows the rail facilities outside of the west portal as seen from the top of Altman/Alpine Pass.  This is before restoration work laid track at various spots once again.  It is also before the removal of the snowshed timbers leading to the west portal and before restoration work to the turntable walkway.

The final portion of the video shows us driving our rental car over the former South Park railroad bridge at Romley several miles below the townsite of Hancock, east of the tunnel.  At a later date the road was diverted around the bridge, as it is today, so you can no longer drive over it.

50th Anniversary of the last South Park trains with Bob Richardson

I just purchased Bob Richardson's autobiography, Chasing Trains.  Richardson, who co-founded the Colorado Railroad Museum, has a number of C&S tidbits that I didn't know about.  Below is one of them.

The modelers at Boulder, Colorado, who maintained Engine 74 in the city park there, loaned us the so-called "bear-trap" cinder catcher they had built from Colorado & Southern patterns for that 2-8-0.  

Photo Source: Heritage Rail Alliance

So, in April of 1987, on the occasion of the final-runs anniversary on the South Park line, we operated No. 346 with our single ex-C&S stock car and the little four-wheel C&S way-car (caboose).  

Author's photo: 1991

It made an unusual and authentic 50th anniversary train, for in 1937, Engine 346 had been on loan to the C&S, and she handled the last livestock train on the South Park--into Jefferson.  The engine has a steel cab instead of the original wooden one, a result of a wreck on the C&S at Kenosha Pass in 1936.  

After the last stock train in 1937, there was a mix-up, and the crew put No. 346 into the Como roundhouse and dumped the fire.  Then, the crew got an automobile ride back to Denver.  The men were supposed to have run the 2-8-0 back to Denver, so the engine could be loaded onto a flatcar and sent back to the D&RGW.  As a result, a crew had to be taken back to Como, where No. 346 was fired up, and the men ran the engine light to Denver.