Leadville line reopens track close to Climax

  A train on the South Park Line reached 11,250 feet again in 2023.  The Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad, the highest adhesion railroad in North America, completed work this fall to allow its trains to reach this spot near Climax for the first time in six years.

The Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad operates on the original Denver South Park & Pacific grade that once stretched from Denver to Leadville, crossing three mountain passes, two of them over the Continental Divide.  The railroad, eventually operated by the Colorado & Southern Ry., in time, sought to abandon all of its narrow gauge lines and succeeded in 1937 with one exception, a 14-mile stretch between Climax and Leadville needed to serve the Climax Molybdenum mine.  Standard gauged in 1943, it ran until 1986, by then absorbed into the Burlington Northern Railroad.  Purchased by Ken and Stephanie Olsen in 1987 and still a family-run business, the LC&S has operated a tourist train on the line continually since 1988.

The railroad owns the track to within a mile of the top of Fremont Pass, but the last few miles have been inaccessible for the last six years.  Track from a segment known as Devils Tail Tangent at MP 140.4 had “slid down the hill over the years,” according to Sean McBride, an LC&S engineer.  This necessitated the turnaround spot for their trains to be at MP 140 near the old French Gulch water tank.  As an aside, the French Gulch Tank once served narrow gauge engines but was moved to the other side of the tracks after the line was widened.  It still stands today.

Sliding track at Devils Tail Tangent-all photos Sean McBride

Work on Devils Tail Tangent.  Climax in distance.

After track work

McBride explained to me that the crew lifted the track at Devils Tail, roughly six feet higher in at least one spot.  After this, he says, “we did some profiling and surfacing between there and the end of the line.”  The line ends in the center of what is known as Stork Curve.  With this section refurbished, LC&S trains can now reach 11,250 feet, a height not accessible since 2017.

End of LC&S track at Stork Curve

Stork Curve.  A mile ahead (east) of the caboose is Climax.

Stork Curve

Out of curiosity, I asked if the track remains from Stork Curve to the mine.  McBride explained, “Technically the tracks do still reach Climax and are still in the ground on Climax property as I understand. We used to own to the front gate at the top of the pass but a few years after Climax reopened they bought back about a mile of r.o.w. from us, so that now the highest we can take the train is Stork Curve.”

C&S fans are thrilled with the rebuilt segments of the railroad such as the Georgetown Loop and the Como complex, but unlike those lines, tracks and trains have never left the ground between Leadville and Climax, and while they may be standard gauge, the LC&S has kept the South Park’s High Line alive nearly 130 years after tracks first conquered these mountains.