C&S 9 video - 2010 arrival at Breckenridge

Close to a decade ago, C&S 9 arrived at her new home on the old Right-of-Way in Breckenridge.  Four years previously she had a short revival to life pulling trains on the Georgetown Loop.  After that she was cosmetically restored and eventually reunited with her tender (at GLRR she operated with C&S 74's tender).  Here is a video of her "final" (one can never know for sure!) move to her present resting place at Rotary Snowplow Park.

Finally, some hope for the Palisades

 So delighted to hear there is some movement on repairing the damage to the rock wall at the Palisades on the way to the west portal of Alpine Tunnel.  If you haven't seen this before, I know the call for letters is past due, but I'm sure they would still welcome a collection of letters as the process to get funding goes forward.

Below is a letter by Chuck Severance detailing what is being done and a way you can help.

There is a concerted effort underway across numerous interested parties to procure funding to repair the Palisades damage from 2016. This effort is being led by Chuck Severance here in Colorado in conjunction with Gunnison National Forest personnel. He is asking for all groups or individuals with any interest in seeing the Palisades repaired to please help out by considering writing a letter in support of the project. These instructions are geared towards groups but individuals are very welcome to write also. The more the merrier! Please see Chuck's call to action below:

Today I am hoping to enlist your help to write a letter of support that we discussed a few months back for the repair of the historic Palisade Wall of the Alpine Tunnel near Pitkin. Here is a short drone video of the wall. 

Progress on this project has been slow but steady for over a year now. We are currently awaiting approved final NFS engineering plans and bids from the contractors, but our concept budget is around $350-$450,000. On a positive note, The National Forest Foundation (NFF) has agreed to be the applicant for all grants. The NFF has the experience and advantage in grant writing, contracting, administration, and insurance. On the downside, History Colorado recently announced they will not be accepting grant applications exceeding $50,000 as a result of their revenue shortfall due to the closing of casinos for COVID.

Despite this setback, our working group of NFF and Gunnison National Forest (GNF) are pushing ahead. It is hoped that even a $50,00 grant will be valued as seed money to fuel other groups to contribute as well. The best news yet, The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) proposed by Senator Gardner and signed by President Trump 8/4/20 provides $2 Billion per year to National Parks and Forests for deferred maintenance – half of which is targeted for roads. As the details of the GAO Act gets clarified, GNF has committed to submitting the Palisade Wall as a shovel ready project. The GNF leaders are now hopeful to join this project not only with engineering and project management, but significant funding as well.

To be proactive in anticipation of GAO Act funding and project approval, we are proceeding with several grant applications. Our first grant application to History Colorado is due September 1st as a draft version and October 1st as a final version. Support letters are critical to each application, as we have discussed. We hope to show a diverse group of users and stakeholders including historic preservation, motorized recreation, and economic impacts.

I am asking that you please include the following in your support letter:

Your name and address on your letterhead, if available.

A description or mission statement of your group.

Number of members.

How you contribute to history, economics, or recreation in Colorado.

Why you think it is important to have the Palisade Wall repaired.

Please sign your support letter.

Letters should be dated and addressed to (but not sent to):

Mr. Tim Stroh, AIA

Director, State Historical Fund

1200 Broadway

Denver, CO 80203

Please scan or save your letters as a .pdf file and e-mail to me at chuck@crsarchitect.com. I hope to receive your support letter by mid September. Please save your letters, as I may ask for the letters to be refreshed with new dates for future applications. Please feel free to call or e-mail me with any questions or comments. I am trying to be brief here, but I have much more to share if you are interested.

Thank you so much for your interest and support in this historic and trail preservation project.

Sincerely yours,

Chuck Severance

C&S boxcar 8179 comes to Como!

On the morning of September 24th, 2020, a C&S boxcar finally came home!  She arrived in Como.  Here is the writeup written by Jason Midyette: 

"Como received a new boxcar this morning.

"Colorado & Southern 8179 was a "Miller Car" that went to the RGS in 1938 and stayed on to the end of operations. The RGS made the car into an outfit car and used it until the end, when it was scrapped. The carbody ended up in Olathe, where it spent nearly 70 years as a shed. The car was acquired by the South Park Rail Society last year. We moved it from Olathe yesterday and unloaded it in Como this morning."

Jason Midyette photo

To see more photos, check out this thread on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum.

Hear the man who piloted the last rotary through Alpine Tunnel

 I came across an amazing gem via the Colorado Railroad Museum website.  

On April 21, 1958, Mac Poor, famed author of DSP&P and co-author of the Pictorial Supplement to the DSP&P, recorded the audio of an interview between himself and George Champion, the man who piloted the final rotary snowplow through Alpine Tunnel.  This journey occurred between December 31, 1909 and January 4, 1910.

It is stunning to hear from a man who was there along with hearing Poor's voice as the two record this historical memory for posterity.

Enjoy!

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.

Rocky Mountain Railroad Club to ride the Loop in 1938...almost

While I've long heard of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club (RMRRC), I largely associated it with excursions on the Rio Grande Southern and the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge in their twilight years.

In research that I've been doing about the C&S narrow gauge in the post-abandonment years I am surprised just how much the RMRRC has come up and how important a role it played in saving or recording parts of the C&S in many cases, not the least of which was their support to help Mac Poor publish his Denver, South Park & Pacific book when the previous rail society who had planned to publish it refused to do so without massive cuts.

In the process of tracking down more details about the history of the RMRRC, I contacted them via their website.  A member responded and recommended that I get a copy of Journeys to Yesteryear by David C. Goss that chronicles the group's activities from 1938 to 2003.  It is a delightful book especially as it describes every excursion from the group's start to 2003 when the book was written.

A curious C&S-related detail popped up in the very first page of the major Club events.  Quoting from the March 1938 issue of Railroad Magazine Carl Hewett wrote "I want to hear from persons interested in forming a rail fan group in Colorado, especially around Denver.  Also, I'd like to organize a narrow gauge fan trip over the famous Georgetown Loop."


On March 30th of that year, the Club had its first meeting "in the basement of the Union Pacific Freight House with approximately 20 charter members present."

In the course of research for the book the author came upon a short letter with no date, but likely 1938, and possibly written by Carl Hewett, when he mentions two trips the group planned to take that year.  The first was to Cheyenne where they hoped to visit the Union Pacific facilities, but this trip never occurred.  The second planned trip was to the Georgetown Loop.

The C&S was already in the midst of abandonment procedures for the line from Idaho Springs to Silver Plume at the time.  The ICC had given permission to junk the line starting May 30, 1937, but due to upheaval from those protesting the C&S plan, the case reopened and the date was pushed back to January 31, 1938.  More back and forth went on and the date was moved to December 31, 1938.  Then, the date was again changed and all was to be revisited on January 31, 1939.  This final date secured permission to abandon and the track was taken up a few months later.

In the midst of all this, the Club had a short window to ride the Loop.  However, in the end, Goss writes, "This trip was not operated either and the Colorado & Southern abandoned this route less than a year later removing the rails."  When one thinks of the iconic images and videos taken of other RMRRC excursions on dying narrow gauge routes like the Rio Grande Southern and the D&RGW, it's sad to think the Club came so close to capturing similar final moments of the Loop just before she was lost.

Sources:

Mac Poor's Denver, South Park & Pacific, 1976 Memorial Edition pg. 404
Daniel W. Edward's A Documentary History of the South Park Line: Vol. 8, pp. 250-252
David C. Goss' Journeys to Yesteryear, 2005, p. 11