A Visit to and a Video of Ohio City

 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

After 8 years, Alpine Tunnel Palisade Wall nearly complete!

The following is a great video that goes into great detail about the work to restore the largest rock wall at the Palisades on the way to Alpine Tunnel. 

The narrator is Marcus Trusty, founder of CORE (Colorado Off Road Enterprise), a motorized advocacy group. He along with many others has played an important role in seeing the 2016 avalanche damage to the rock wall repaired.

You will see great shots of the wall, of the work, and especially of rock scaling where you can see boulders come crashing down.

At one point Trusty dialogues with one of the stone masons. They discuss artifacts found during the work. Not much was unearthed, but the workers did find some spikes, a piece of rail, and "a train brake." Apparently these were taken to "the Pitkin guard station" to be put on display "up there." Not sure if he meant on display in Pitkin or at the Alpine Tunnel station. They also found "a lot of little nails and dynamite crates."

They also discuss the process of splitting rocks and how the workers today did it very similarly to the construction workers of the 1880s. They surmise that one of the original sources of rock when the railroad was built is at the present intersection of Williams Pass and the railroad grade just above the large rock wall.

One interesting fact was that Williams Pass was never graded very well because it was only intended as a temporary road for construction of the railroad. Is this accurate? Trusty commented that Hancock Pass, on the other hand, was a more regularly used road.

It was encouraging to learn from the video that work was also done to repair some of the other several walls along this stretch in addition to the famous large one.

Some have asked about the issue of drainage with the restoration and their work on that is also discussed.

The narrator estimates that the entire project, that required many different partners, came to about a million dollars.

Later Marcus Trusty goes into great detail about all the various groups and grants that made this work possible. It is almost hard to follow it all, but it is a reminder of just how many organizations and individuals it has taken to make this work happen. It should be sobering to realize that railfans and historical groups could not have pulled this off alone. We are indebted to the many non-railfan groups that finally made this 8-year-project come together.

See video of rock scaling above the Palisade Wall

The video below is put out by a gentlemen involved with a trail organization that has played a role and pushing to get funding for the restoration of the Palisade Rock Wall west of Alpine Tunnel. It is a year old at this point, but he details some of the work being done. 

The best parts of the video, though, are the drone shots. There is an epic one of rock scaling above the Rock Wall. You'll see a large boulder being sent down with many crashing results. It gives a good sense of how the avalanche came down in 2016 that broke out the wall (as well as the one that may have come down in 1884 and destroyed Woodstock). In that same shot, as the rock falls down, you get a unique view of the roadbed and Rock Wall from above.

There are additional drone shots of the wall as well as the roadbed that highlight the incredible 19th century engineering of the route.

The good news is that the video is right about most of the work he mentioned. As seen in my previous post, major reconstruction work occurred this summer. 

Alpine Tunnel Palisade Wall Repair Status 7-2024

Justin Kerns shared news on the repair work being done to the big Palisade Wall a few miles west of Alpine Tunnel. He posted the text and photos below over on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum and graciously gave me permission to repost it here.

Justin wrote:

An update on the progress at the Palisade Wall. Work commenced on 6/18/2024 and is going smoothly so far (Progress is estimated at 50% complete as of July 24, 2024). The hope is that it will be completed this season before weather shuts things down. For this summer FR839 below the wall is closed as is Williams Pass so there is no way to drive between Hancock and Pitkin. This is necessary during construction for safety reasons. 

Someone on the forum asked, "I'm curious if the historic blocks are being retrieved and replaced or are these new blocks for the new work?" 

Justin responded: There weren't actually too many stones missing. The old capstones fell over 100 years ago so those were made new in the same quarry area used for the original wall. As many of the stones that were swept down in 2016 as could be recovered reasonably were also re-used with some being newly cut. So it's a mix of original and new but all from the same granite area just up the road a bit. They are also repairing a few other smaller walls as needed along the grade.

Here are some photos of the progress:

C&S No. 2 modeled in Germany

Since the posting of the video of my visit to C&S baggage car No. 2 in Nebraska, a gentlemen from Germany reached out. He models the C&S and specifically made baggage car No. 2. You can see it running on his layout in the video below. Very cool that the C&S even has fans in Deutschland!