22-12-17 PHOTOS: Salida

Once again I managed to find the time to explore the defunct DRG&W Tennessee Pass Line while on one of my annual trips to Colorado. I had previously visited the area in April of 2021, but as is often the case, I overlooked a couple of accessible signal locations so it came down to finding a mechanism to get my friends to drive the 5 hour round trip from our base in Evergreen. The solution came by surreptitiously arranging a "brewery tour" around the tourist/artist community of Salida, Colorado that just happened to align with the aforementioned missed railroad locations. Unfortunately out of service rail lines don't tend to feature many train movements, however I was able to pop by the Peoria RTD station to pad out the content that can be seen here ( mirror ).

Departing Amtrak's BWI Airport Rail Station Airport I spotted Southwest's New Mexico heritage unit at the new terminal A.

Salida, Colorado was the northeastern interchange point for the Denver, Rio Grande and Western's narrow gauge network. Until the 1960's, what was mostly mineral traffic would be transferred off narrow gauge, steam powered freight trains to the DRGW's Tennessee Pass main line at a yard located at the base of Tenderfoot Hill in Salida.

After the termination of narrow gauge ops, the yard at Salida continued to serve local industry including this limestone processing facility that was build adjacent to the east end of the yard.

After Union Pacific engineered an underhanded merger to gain control of the Southern Pacific and DRGW in the mid-1990's, it immediately shut down the Tennessee Pass route connecting Pueblo and Salt Lake City as it was surplus to requirements. However as the Union Pacific did not want to expose itself to competition it has held the line out of service ever since as opposed to selling or abandoning it. This has had the effect of preserving the 1960's vintage CTC signaling system such as this mast with hooded GRS Type D signals at EE SALIDA.

The proximity to town has resulted in the equipment at EE SALIDA being more exposed to infrastructure explorers, but there was been surprisingly little wanton destruction and all the glass lenses were intact.

Manipulating the rear doors on the signal made it possible to simulate a Clear main track signal indication in the eastbound direction.

View of the rusting Salida Yard looking westbound with Mt Princeton off in the distance.

The Sawatch Range overlooks the Tennessee Pass Line valley to the west.

Although I had already visited the west end of Salida yard in 2021, I took a moment to check back in and found the same old GRS model 5D switch machine amongst some higher weeds.

Unfortunately because of the booming local real estate market an enterprising vagrant had dumped out the contents of the relay hut and taken up residence.

Elevation Brewing Co off US 50 west of town was built right on the old DRGW narrow gauge RoW which now serves as a cycling path.

Other DRGW locations I managed to visit included the milepost 240 intermediate signals and the defect detector at milepost 239.7.

On my way back to Denver Airport I spotted some UP EMD geeps switching industry in Roydale, CO.

At the nearby Peoria RTD station I caught the scheduled passing of A-Line trains including Silverliner V #4009, #4029 and #4030.

Hanging out in the light rail R Line storage yard was Siemens SD100 #105 and SD160 #227 along with a wrapped SD160 #243.

While traversing to Airport Blvd I manage to catch the Chambers Road 4-quadrant crossing activation for an approaching westbound RTD Denver A-Line train consisting of four Silverliners V.



That pretty much wraps things up for Denver, although upon arrival at BWI I ran into Southwest California heritage unit providing a nice bookend to the trip.