The Almost-Last-Train Through Alpine Tunnel

All photos from my 2018 visit to East Portal

If you have ever visited either the western or eastern (non-vehicle-using) approaches to Alpine Tunnel you are well aware of the amount of rocks that litter the former roadbed.  Some rocks are quite small and some are veritable boulders.  One can only imagine the challenges faced by section crews in operation days who had to keep the line clear for regular freight and passenger runs.  

Imagine, instead, a section crew trying to clear the line after more than half a year of no maintenance whatsoever.

Such was the problem facing the C&S in the summer of 1911 as the railroad attempted to figure out a way to move some stranded cars and other scrap left in Gunnison, on the west side of the pass, after cessation of traffic between Quartz and Hancock in November of 1910.  The last trains had run over the pass in December of that year, but could one more train make it? The tracks were still in place. Maybe one more last train could be run to solve the problem of these stranded cars. The question facing management, then, was this: in what condition was the tunnel, the tracks, and the right-of-way after roughly 6 months of no maintenance on the remote mountainous line?

C&S Railway Superintendent William M. Bacon took a personal trip to Alpine Tunnel on June 28th, 1911 to inspect its condition himself. What he discovered at the bore quickly put the idea of a final train out of the question: six hundred feet of ice at a depth of 8 to 9 feet extended before him in the darkness of Alpine Tunnel. He came to the conclusion that the ice would not melt even at the height of that summer.

The other, quite literal, roadblock consisted of rock slides between the tunnel and Quartz on the west side of the pass.  Bacon had traveled to the pass on the eastern approach so did not witness these slides himself. Still, he had heard of the obstacles and concluded that the cost of removing them was another strike against an attempt to bring the stranded cars and scrap over the pass in one final funeral train.

It is curious to note that, had this run occurred, the engines employed would not have been able to make a water stop at the top of the pass.  The west portal tank had already been removed in December of 1910. In February 1911 the C&S reinstalled it in Webster, east of Kenosha Pass, replacing the previous tank at that site. 

In the end, that almost-last-train through Alpine Tunnel never ran. Superintendent Bacon’s inspection sealed that possibility. Instead, the C&S forked over the money to send its cars and scrap on the Rio Grande.  The D&RG hauled it all over their Marshall Pass route and, presumably, up to Buena Vista where the cars were returned to C&S rails.

Source:

The South Park Line: A Concise History. Colorado Rail Annual No. 12 by Chappell, Richardson & Hauck.