In May of 2024 my our family took a road trip to Colorado. Our first goal was to pick up our oldest daughter who spent the year studying at Worldview at the Abbey, a biblical studies program. We decided to stay for nearly a month and enjoy the mountains and, of course, do a lot of C&S exploring.
I hadn't been to Central City, home to C&S 71 and her train, since 1992. My first visit to No. 71 was in 1990 as a teenager. Our family had hoped to ride behind No. 71 as printed tourist guides at the time listed it as active (Here is a 1989 video showing her at work). Unfortunately, we arrived and only found this:
That is yours truly at age 14. I was happy to see No. 71, but disappointed that not a living soul was around and 71 was cold with a flatcar of junk on her prow. Our family returned in 1992 to find this:
I knew by this point that the tourist route that ran her was no longer in operation, but it was still sad and the engine was also in sad shape. Years later, through a lot of research I learned the story of the railroad's bankruptcy. The story of the Black Hawk and Central City Railroad will be included in my upcoming book (The book has been a long time in coming, but the publisher and I are nearing layout stage and working through captions and cover options now).
Despite visiting Colorado many times since 1992, I never made it back to Central City until this past May when I finally got to see 71's (and combine 20's) home since the late 1990s which you can see below.
There is a move afoot to resurrect the old twice-abandoned route of a Central City tourist railroad. They made big progress this year as can be seen below. There are also more recent updates on the project's website here. I have heard little else since that August 2024 update, so it's hard to know the status.
The Leadville, Colorado & Southern got a little spotlight on the news a few weeks ago. The news spot below tells a little bit of the story of how this last stretch of the South Park Line survived after the Burlington Northern called it quits in the 1980s.
I'm sad to say I haven't had a chance to re-ride this one since I was a teen. Hopefully, on another trip out to Colorado, my family and I can travel along the old Leadville to Climax route again.
This segment was originally the end of the line from Denver of the Denver, South Park & Pacific. Later it became the Denver, Leadville & Gunnison and finally the Colorado and Southern. After all of the remaining C&Sng was abandoned in 1941-1942, the Leadville to Climax stretch held out until it was standard gauged in 1943. The C&S (under the CB&Q and later the BN) operated it through 1981 when the C&S was absorbed into the Burlington Northern completely. The line closed down in 1986 and, as the video points out was purchased by the Olsen's for $10. It has operated ever since as the Leadville, Colorado & Southern.
Above: a photo from my early 1990s visit to the LC&S. C&S standard gauge 641 is on display next to the old C&S Leadville depot. 641 was the last regularly scheduled operating (standard gauge) steam engine on a Class 1 railroad when it gave up the ghost in 1962.
This is what the C&S freight house looked like in the early 1990s. It has since been turned into an event center.
In May 2024, my family spent close to a week just outside of Ohio City. We rented a lovely Airbnb cabin and thoroughly enjoyed being so far 'out of the way.' It also afforded great time to explore the remains of the C&S/DSP&P line between Parlin and Pitkin. We took several trips out to see what we could find of the roadbed. Thankfully, you can find it largely by looking for the location of today's telephone lines (yesteryear's telegraph lines).
Much of the right-of-way is on private property, particularly ranches. One of the few spots where this is not the case was near milepost 178. The roadbed there cuts through a forest at this spot. One of my daughters and I set out to see what we could find. It was quite a mess of trees and sticks, but we gave it a shot anyway. Along the way we found what might be railroad tie remains, though, I can't say for sure.
Either way, it was a fun jaunt of narrow gauge archaeology.
The yellow line shows where the ROW once was between Ohio City and Pitkin.
This is the segment traversed in the video.
Here is the same segment as above. You can see how the ROW parallels the road at times, sometimes joins the roads at others, and swings away at still others.
Here is a close-up just east of milepost 179. I think the overlay is wrong here. I believe the ROW is now used as part of a driveway towards the top of the screenshot.
This shows the segment where we got out and walked. We parked to the right of the road and then journeyed into the forest at right. In that segment it looked to us that the roadbed went through a long, though not high, cut. We walked from the beginning of the clump of trees at right to the point where the ROW exits that clump of trees as it rejoins the present road.
I found a site with a handful of nice C&S photos from Bill Raia's collection. There is a series of shots of C&S 71 pulling a train largely made up of gondolas through Clear Creek canyon in 1939. There is another of a wrecked engine, likely from Boreas Pass. There are also some excellent shots of former C&S No. 74 during its tenure on the Rio Grande Southern. Photos are available for purchase at Raia's SmugMug page.
I came across this video below with a tour of C&S No. 9 and Boreas Pass Road and found it interesting. The narrator is off on some details and railroad terminology, but I think you'll enjoy his delight at experiencing the wonders of the line over the pass. The fall colors are also stunning.
In an exciting announcement CPR News published the article "After years of repairs and careful restoration, historic Alpine Tunnel Road reopens near Pitkin." The article lauds the multi-year work done to repair the rock wall damaged in 2016 by an avalanche. The damage closed the road for vehicles to the Alpine Tunnel station complex and the west portal for roughly eight years. During that time, vehicles needed to be parked just a little upgrade of Sherrod Loop. Finally, as the article states, "After years of repairs, a historic road deep in the Rocky Mountains has finally reopened — just in time for fall."
But the news is a bit tempered. If you read to the end, you come across this sentence: "There still is one hiccup when visiting the historic district: a large boulder that’s a little less than a mile from the historic tunnel. Visitors can park at the intersection of the Alpine Tunnel Road and Williams Road, and walk the rest of the way."
What???
There is no other info on the boulder and the circumstance surrounding it. But, essentially, you can at least drive over the old South Park grade eastbound past the former parking spot above Sherrod and, presumably, past the rock wall, but not much farther.
Trains that traveled east toward the Alpine Tunnel left Gunnison and reached Parlin roughly 11 miles later. A few landmarks still exist to help one identify the former DSP&P/C&S grade through the small town. In this video I visited the site of Parlin and point out the location of the right-of-way and the wye. At the end we travel on today's CR-76 which is on the old right-of-way. Toward the end I point out where the ROW leaves the road.
The west leg of the Parlin wye curved just behind the barn.
The Parlin post office.
Across US-50 is look westbound is the right-of-way leading to Gunnison.
The C&S grade is no CR-76 heading east out of Parlin. Not far from Parlin the right-of-way goes to the right (following the telephone poles) and the road veers to the left.
In June 1941, just over three decades after the abandonment of the Alpine Tunnel, Railroad Magazine published an article titled "The Alpine Tunnel Route." The author, Lewis R. Lathrop, was a D&RG fireman who knew South Park trainmen who ran trains over the "hill" through the famous tunnel and swapped stories with them in a cigar store. In fact, he started work with the Rio Grande just two years after the arrival of the DSP&P into Gunnison.
There are some epic stories in here including one in which a crew of trainmen and snow shovelers managed to turn an engine around with hydraulic jacks. I admit, I still don't understand how they did it. Essentially, a snow blockade kept them from getting through the east portal of Alpine Tunnel, but snow had drifted back behind them. They decided they had a better chance at plowing through the line westward back to Pitkin, but...they needed to turn an engine around with a plow on the front.
While discussing some epic snowbucking skills the South Park railroaders possessed, Lathrop, the D&RG man, admitted that the DSP&P had superior equipment to theirs and that the DSP&P railroaders were better skilled at fighting snow. As evidence he tells of a blockade of Marshall Pass where two South Park "hoggers" opened the Rio Grande line themselves.
Lewis A. Lathrop actually, as the article puts it, "crossed the great divide" a few months before publication of this article. His son Gilbert assisted with its completion.
*A few notes: the story of a stalled circus train being pushed by elephants on the Alpine Tunnel route is likely legend.
Also, the article concludes by stating the rails over the pass were pulled in 1917. They were actually pulled in 1923 and 1924.
In the December 1943 edition of Railroad Magazine the publication reported the sad occasion of the final Colorado & Southern Railway narrow gauge run. Many of us are familiar with the well-publicized event (Even Life Magazine photographed it). I thought it was interesting to see an article from the time period itself. As the author wrote, on August 25th, 1943 the South Park Line had at last "Gone to Glory."
In the June 1939 issue of Railroad Magazine a Burlington employee from South Dakota wrote an article describing a sad but historic ride he took on the Clear Creek Line. M.L. Hart saw a notice that the Colorado & Southern was going to abandon its narrow gauge line west of Idaho Springs including the Georgetown Loop. He asked and received permission to ride what he called the "Graveyard Run" on January 30th, 1939.
Along the way, riding in the caboose and later a gondola of gravel, he chats with conductor Billy Maas who later pushes a caboose with his bare hands, interacts with famed railroad photographer Richard Kindig, watches the switching at Forks Creek, witnesses construction of Highway 6 in the canyon, and hears the annoyance of a workman in Empire complaining about the railroad's choice to cut the line farther east. Lastly, he takes a trip by car up to Georgetown just two months before the tracks will be torn up.
In the page below the author claims that the high bridge of the Georgetown Loop was originally built of wood. I've never heard that before. My guess is this is incorrect.
Thank you to Jim Reisdorff, publisher at South Platte Press, who graciously sent me any C&Sng articles that he came across while sifting through his old collection of Railroad Magazine. Jim is presently editing a book I wrote on C&Sng restorations.
Billy Westall, a South Park engineer, gave his life to save the passengers on his eastbound train in Platte Canyon. He stayed at his post as it hit a slide in Platte Canyon on August 28, 1898, saving every life on the train. The monument to his sacrifice still stands in the canyon.
Tommy Allen shares Westall's story in the video below. Allen enjoys sharing historical tales through his podcasts and videos entitled "Stories from the Midland." I was quite impressed at his effective storytelling and this video is a good introduction to his other work.
The South Park Line crossed the continental divide on its way to Gunnison, piercing the range with the famed Alpine Tunnel. After it came down the mountainside, it passed through a number of towns including the ill-fated Woodstock, the small town of Quartz, and the relatively-sizeable Pitkin. Beyond Pitkin, the next town was Ohio City at 8563 feet above sea level.
Here is a video I made of my family's recent visit to show the various railroad sites there.
While the town is nowhere near the size of Pitkin, it still has a number of residents.
One of its remaining early structures is the city hall building which was originally a mercantile business.
Present-day Country Road 76 crosses through the center of town. The railroad parallels the road here, but about a block away.
Walking down a dirt town road you can find where the railroad facilities once stood, though there is nothing besides map knowledge and the telephone poles which follow where the grade was to give it away.
In the photo below, the grade ran in a perpendicular line to the road along the gate at the end of the road. To the left would have been the water tank. To the right would have been the section house and a platform. Out of sight to the right was where the depot stood.
A photo looking west. The right-of-way follows the telephone lines. The section house and depot would have been to the right.
A photo looking east (toward Pitkin and Alpine Tunnel). The roadbed goes through the distant pickup truck. The water tower would have been on the left.
Here is the site (looking east) in railroad days.
My favorite experience of my family's visit to Ohio City was when my 12-year-old daughter and I climbed a hill to attempt to recreate an old hilltop photo of the town showing a mixed train with two engines just about to enter Ohio City. It was a huff and puff climb, but we did it and got a fairly close photo.
Photos:
The following from Tom and Denise Klinger's South Park's Gunnison Division Memories & Then Some:
Overhead photo of town and hilltop photo of town: Gunnison County Pioneer and Historical Society
