Like I said in the intro, the Tennessee Pass like has been out of service since 1997 after Union Pacific saw no need for a second route between Denver and Salt Lake City. Previously the line had belonged to the Denver Rio Grande and Western, a corporate entity that also owned Southern Pacific. Union Pacific had envied a takeover of SP due to SPs ownership of the Oakland Container terminal and had gone as far to use some underhanded tactics to block the ATSF merger of the 1980s TLDR, the Rio Grand route across Colorado was an afterthought for UP and the Tennessee Pass line was removed from service, but not abandoned because it could serve as an emergency backup in case the Moffat Tunnel suffered a catastrophic failure.
Today the Tennessee Pass line is a railroad preserved in amber. Not only is it protected against re-signaling protects or PTC, but the arid mountain climate literally protects the infrastructure from rot and corrosion. Everything was left in place from the rails to the signals to the interlocking appliances. Here we see the signals at the west end of the Nathrop siding and an example of why The West is such an amazing place.
The relay hut was unsecured and although scrappers had hit the coils and the wire, the relays themselves were piled, unbroken, in a corner.
The Arkansas River defined the Rio Grand's first assault on the Rockies. The biggest problem is that trains can only access this route from Pueblo, 120 miles south of Denver.
It seems these days I can't do any railfanning without spotting a bald eagle. The bald eagle population has quadrupled since 2009.
Being into infrastructure renders "out of service" meaningless. East end of the Nathrop siding.
Don't let the Vader hoods fool you. These signals are old school GRS Type D's, not Safetran CLS-20s seen here at the east end of the Brown Canyon siding.
In the age before radio readouts, detect detectors had to use wayside indicators like this blue strobe light at the Milepost 2218 intermediate signals,.
The line was also a superb reservoir of General Railway Signal Model 5D point machines. The 5D can be differentiated from the later 5H by the presence of a braking clutch box on the motor.
Salida, Colorado is one of the larger communities on the Tennessee Pass. The town celebrates its heritage with a large white S on an adjacent mountain in addition to a former DRGW caboose. Salida was the base for most of the DRG&W's narrow Gauge operations that served small mining communities throughout the Colorado Rockies.
The Great Sand Dunes of Great Sand Dunes National Park are a self sustaining phenomena caused by water flowing down from the adjacent mountains with eroded rock particles. The water evaporates on the arid valley to the west of the mountains leaving the eroded particles behind as sand. The sand is blown up into dunes at the base of the mountains. Any sand that is blown into the mountains is washed down by the water and the cycle repeats.
The closest significant settlement to the Great Sand Dunes is Alamosa, Colorado, home of the San Luis and Rio Grande and Rio Grande Scenic Railroads. Unfortunately both were part of the ill-fated Iowa Pacific Holdings passenger train operator that descended into bankruptcy in 2020. In additional to the Rio Grande Scenic operation, Alamosa was a major storage location for Iowa Pacific equipment (under SLGR reporting marks). In the west end of the yard were a pair of former Minnesota Zephyr FP7 A units along with a Waccamaw Coast Line Railroad B unit and SDCX F7 A unit #9132, which also came via the Waccamaw Coast Line.
On an adjacent track was former METRA/CNW E8 unit #518 along with a coach #1067.
The SLGR was actually a legit freight operation that had some modern power such as SD70M-2's and this F40M-2F #227.
Long lines of coaches, including two observation cars and a great done were parked in front of the Alamosa depot. In the following year many of these cars would be sold by the bankruptcy trustee.
The depot itself being a fairly substantial Rio Grande facility that served both DRG&W standard and narrow gauge lines.
SLRG #1600 is a former Wabash parlor observation car painted in the Illinois Central inspired brown and orange Iowa Pacific colors.
Great dome #59 was a former Milwaukee Road car.
Also on site were at least two former LIRR C1 cars, #3009 and #1010, which were made by Tokyu Car Company in 1990. Tokyu Car was Budd's Japanese licensee and the cars were initially designed by Commonwealth Engineering, Budd;s Australian licensee. All this may hint to some Budd involvement in the project before they exited the market in the late 80's.
Open air observation car #1056 was originally built for the Southern Railway. A fair number of these cars would go on to be purchased by the Reading and Northern to further expand that road's already impressive passenger operations.
As I was walking around I heard some sounds of activity and realized that a Union Pacific road freight locomotive, AC4400 #6922, was undergoing some sort of check under an emissions rig. Not sure why this unit was hear or why ad hoc work was being performed. Possibly SLGR lease power or perhaps low cost contract repair work for UP.
Near the west end of the yard was a another late model observation car, #3378, former IC lounge observation car "Calumet Club".
Sitting just outside of the SLRG shop facility was SLRG FP10 #1100 in a very sharp looking paint scheme.
12 hours later a storm arrived that would eventually blanket Denver with north of 24 inches of snow. Fortunately my flight 2 days later was scheduled just a hour or so after the airport managed to re-open, but the rental car return was absolutely slammed and I almost missed it. Anyway, here is a Denver RTD A Line train heading to the airport from downtown. The commuter train service to the airport was shut down for the storm, but that was mostly due to the airport not being able to accommodate any new arrivals.
Before my flight I grabbed this video from the front of the DEN people-mover on its entire outbound run from the terminal to concourse C.
I hope you enjoyed all that. Next week its back to South Jersey for some Atlantic City Line action.
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