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DENVER
& RIO GRANDE WESTERN HO-scale REEFER BOX CAR D&RGW 1617 RTR KD DARK
GREEN
BUILT AND READY TO RUN RTR
KAYDEE COUPLERS INSTALLED
The Denver and Rio Grande
Western Railroad (reporting mark DRGW), often shortened to Rio Grande, D&RG
or D&RGW, formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, was an American
Class I railroad company. The railroad started as a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge
line running south from Denver, Colorado, in 1870. It served mainly as a
transcontinental bridge line between Denver and Salt Lake City, Utah. The Rio
Grande was also a major origin of coal and mineral traffic.
The Rio Grande was the epitome
of mountain railroading, with a motto of Through the Rockies, not around them
and later Main line through the Rockies, both referring to the Rocky Mountains.
The D&RGW operated the
highest mainline rail line in the United States, over the 10,240 feet (3,120 m)
Tennessee Pass in Colorado, and the famed routes through the Moffat Tunnel and
the Royal Gorge. At its height, in 1889, the D&RGW had the largest
narrow-gauge railroad network in North America with 1,861 miles (2,995 km) of
track interconnecting the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.[1] Known
for its independence, the D&RGW operated the Rio Grande Zephyr until its
discontinuation in 1983. This was the last private intercity passenger train in
the United States until Brightline began service in Florida in 2018.
In 1988, the Rio Grande's parent
corporation, Rio Grande Industries, purchased Southern Pacific Transportation
Company, and as the result of a merger, the larger Southern Pacific Railroad
name was chosen for identity.[2] The Rio Grande operated as a separate division
of the Southern Pacific until 1992.[3] Today, most former D&RGW main lines
are owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad while several branch lines
are now operated as heritage railways by various companies.
The Denver & Rio Grande
Railway (D&RG) was incorporated on October 27, 1870, by General William
Jackson Palmer (18361909), and a board of four directors. It was originally
announced that the new 3 ft (914 mm) railroad would proceed south from Denver
and travel an estimated 875 miles (1,408 km) south to El Paso via Pueblo,
westward along the Arkansas River, and continue southward through the San Luis
Valley of Colorado toward the Rio Grande.[4] Closely assisted by his friend and
new business partner Dr. William Bell, Palmer's new "Baby Road" laid
the first rails out of Denver on July 28, 1871, and reached the location of the
new town of Colorado Springs (then the Fountain Colony) by October 21. Narrow
gauge was chosen in part because construction and equipment costs would be
relatively more affordable when weighed against that of the prevailing standard
gauge. Palmer's first hand impressions of the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales
buoyed his interest in the narrow-gauge concept which would prove to be
advantageous while conquering the mountainous regions of the Southwest.
Eventually the route of the D&RG would be amended (including a plan to
continue south from Pueblo over Raton Pass) and added to as new opportunities
and competition challenged the railroad's expanding goals.
Feverish, competitive
construction plans provoked the 18771880 war over right of way with the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Both rivals hired gunslingers and bought
politicians while courts intervened to bring settlement to the disagreements. One
anecdote of the conflict recounts June, 1879, when the Santa Fe defended its
roundhouse in Pueblo with Dodge City toughs led by Bat Masterson; on that
occasion, D&RG treasurer R. F. Weitbrec paid the defenders to leave. In
March, 1880, a Boston Court granted the AT&SF the rights to Raton Pass,
while the D&RG paid an exorbitant $1.4 million for the trackage extending
through the Arkansas River's Royal Gorge. The D&RG's possession of this
route allowed quick access to the booming mining district of Leadville,
Colorado. While this "Treaty of Boston"[5] did not exactly favor the
purist of original D&RG intentions, the conquering of new mining
settlements to the west and the future opportunity to expand into Utah was
realized from this settlement.
During the late 1800s the
D&RG made extensive use of consolidations (engines with a 2-8-0 wheel
arrangement). This drawing, of an unusual wheel arrangement, was titled
"Standard Consolidation Engine," 1881.
Over the course of decades,
D&RG consolidations were subjected to various modifications. In the 20th
century, diamond stacks gave way to straight stacks, box headlights were
replaced with round ones, decorative trim disappeared from the domes, and wooden
pilots (cowcatchers) were replaced with steel ones.
By late 1880, William Bell had
begun to organize railway construction in Utah that would become the Palmer
controlled Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway in mid-1881. The intention
of the D&RGW (aka the "Western") was to work eastward from Provo
to an eventual link with westward bound D&RG in Colorado. This physical
connection was realized near the Green River on March 30, 1883, and by May of
that year the D&RG formally leased its Utah subsidiary as previously
planned. By mid-1883, financial difficulties due to aggressive growth and
expenditures led to a shake up among the D&RG board of directors, and
General Palmer resigned as president of the D&RG in August, 1883, while
retaining that position with the Western. Frederick Lovejoy would soon fill Palmer's
vacated seat on the D&RG, the first in a succession of post Palmer
presidents that would attempt to direct the railroad through future struggles
and successes.
Following bitter conflict with
the Rio Grande Western during lease disagreements and continued financial
struggles, the D&RG went into receivership in July, 1884, with
court-appointed receiver William S. Jackson in control. Eventual foreclosure
and sale of the original Denver & Rio Grande Railway resulted within two
years, and the new Denver & Rio Grande Railroad took formal control of the
property and holdings on July 14, 1886, with Jackson appointed as president.
General Palmer would continue as president of the Utah line until retirement
(due to company re-organization) in 1901.
Throughout the railroad's
history its primary heavy repair shops were located south of Denver, Colorado
in Burnham. They were built in 1871 and equipped to service both narrow gauge
and standard gauge rolling stock. In 1922 the site received $3 million in
upgrades, expanding the capacity to repair locomotives and cars. The last steam
locomotive was serviced in 1956, at which time the locomotive department was
converted to service diesel engines. The other major back shop site was in Salt
Lake City, Utah, built in 1883. The shops in Alamosa, Colorado primarily
serviced narrow gauge rolling stock.
Royal Gorge Route
The D&RG built west from
Pueblo reaching Cañon City in 1874. The line through the Royal Gorge reached
Salida on May 20, 1880, and was pushed to Leadville later that same year. From
Salida, the D&RG pushed west over the Continental Divide at the 10,845 feet
(3,306 m) Marshall Pass and reached Gunnison on August 6, 1881. From Gunnison
the line entered the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River passing the famous
Curecanti Needle seen in their famous Scenic Line of the World Herald. The
tracks left the increasingly-difficult canyon at Cimmaron and passed over Cerro
Summit, reaching Montrose on September 8, 1882. From Montrose, a line was laid
north through Delta, reaching Grand Junction in March, 1883. The line continued
building west until reaching the D&RGW close to present day Green River
which completed a narrow-gauge transcontinental link with the Rio Grande
Western Railway to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The line from Pueblo to
Leadville was upgraded in 1887 to three rails to accommodate both narrow-gauge
and standard-gauge operation. Narrow-gauge branch lines were constructed to
Chama, New Mexico, Durango, Silverton, Crested Butte, Lake City, Ouray and Somerset,
Colorado.
The route over Tennessee Pass
had steep grades, and it was not uncommon to see trains running with midtrain
and rear-end helpers. In 1997, a year after the D&RGW/SP merger with Union
Pacific, the UP closed the line. Although it has been out of service for more
than two decades, the rails are still in usable condition, though many of the
signals have been ravaged by time and vandals. In 2011, under a federal
Beautification Grant, a private contractor removed and scrapped the railroad's
overhead signal pole lines.
San Juan Extension
The D&RG also pushed west
from Walsenburg, Colorado, over La Veta Pass (now "Old La Veta Pass")
by 1877. At the time the 'Uptop' depot on Veta Pass, rising over 9,500 feet
(2,900 m) in elevation, boasted the highest elevation for a narrow-gauge
railroad. The railroad reached Alamosa by 1878. From Alamosa, a line was pushed
south through Antonito eventually reaching Santa Fe, New Mexico (the Chili
Line), and west as far as Creede, Colorado. A line containing one of the
longest narrow-gauge tangent tracks in U.S. railroading (52.82 miles or 85
kilometers) also linked Alamosa with Salida to the north. From Antonito a line
was built over 10,015 feet (3,053 m) Cumbres Pass, along the Colorado-New
Mexico border, reaching Durango, Colorado, in August, 1881 and continuing north
to the rich mining areas around Silverton in July, 1882. A line was also
constructed in 1902 as a standard-gauge line, perhaps in anticipation of
possible standard gauging of the entire line, south from Durango to Farmington,
New Mexico.
Part of the reason for this
isolated change of gauge was that the Southern Pacific contemplated extending
to access coal fields in the northern San Juan basin, had surveyors working
there, and had incorporated a subsidiary, the Arizona & Colorado Railroad
Company, for this purpose. As a defensive move, this may have been enough to
discourage the A&C from proceeding to construction.[6] Originally hauling
mainly agricultural products, the Farmington line was converted to narrow gauge
in 1923,[7] and later delivered pipe and other construction materials to the
local oil and natural gas industry into the 1960s.
Portions of the AlamosaDurango
line survive to this day. The WalsenburgAlamosaAntonito line survives as the
standard-gauge Colorado Pacific Rio Grande Railroad, with passenger excursion
trains service provided by the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad. Two narrow-gauge
segments survive as steam railroads, the AntonitoChama line as the Cumbres and
Toltec Scenic Railroad and DurangoSilverton as the Durango and Silverton
Narrow Gauge Railroad.
Rio Grande Southern Railroad
connected to San Juan Extension in Durango and went through the western edge of
San Juan Mountains to Ridgway, Colorado on MontroseOuray branch.
Tennessee Pass
The D&RG built west from
Leadville over 10,240 feet (3,120 m) Tennessee Pass in an attempt to reach the
mining areas around Aspen, Colorado, before its rival railroad in the area, the
Colorado Midland, could build a line reaching there. The D&RG built a line
through Glenwood Canyon to Glenwood Springs, reaching Aspen in October,
1887.[8] The D&RG then joined with the Colorado Midland to build a line
from Glenwood Springs connecting with D&RG at Grand Junction. Originally
considered a secondary branch route to Grand Junction, the entire route from
Leadville to Grand Junction was upgraded to standard gauge in 1890,[8] and the
original narrow-gauge route via Marshall Pass became a secondary route.
Denver & Rio Grande Western
The first (1881-1889) Denver
& Rio Grande Western Railway built a narrow-gauge line from Ogden, Utah via
Soldier Summit, Utah to Grand Junction, Colorado. The railroad was reorganized
as the Rio Grande Western Railway in 1889, as part of a finance plan to upgrade
the line from narrow gauge to standard gauge, and built several branch lines in
Utah to reach lucrative coal fields. It was the railway which Gustaf
Nordenskiöld employed to haul boxcars of relics from the Mesa Verde, Colorado,
cliff dwellings, in 1891, en route to the National Museum of Finland. In 1901,
the Denver & Rio Grande merged with the Rio Grande Western, consolidating
in 1908. However, the railroad was weakened by speculators, who had used the
Rio Grande's equity to finance Western Pacific Railroad construction. The
United States Railroad Administration (USRA) took over the D&RG during
World War I. In 1918, the D&RG fell into receivership after the bankruptcy
of Western Pacific. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW or
DRGW) was incorporated in 1920, and formally emerged as the new re-organization
of the old Denver & Rio Grande Railroad on July 31, 1921.
Moffat Road
In 1931, the D&RGW acquired
the Denver and Salt Lake Western Railroad, a paper railroad subsidiary of the
Denver and Salt Lake Railroad, (D&SL) which had acquired the rights to
build a 40-mile (64 km) connection between the two railroads. After years of
negotiation, the D&RGW gained trackage rights on the D&SL from Denver
to the new cutoff. In 1932, the D&RGW began construction of the Dotsero
Cutoff east of Glenwood Springs to near Bond on the Colorado River, at a
location called Orestod (Dotsero spelled backward). Construction was completed
in 1934, giving Denver a direct transcontinental link to the west.[10] The
D&RGW slipped into bankruptcy again in 1935.[11] Emerging in 1947, it
merged with the D&SL on March 3, 1947, gaining control of the "Moffat
Road" through the Moffat Tunnel and a branch line from Bond to Craig,
Colorado.
Finally free from financial
problems, the D&RGW now possessed a direct route from Denver to Salt Lake
City (the detour south through Pueblo and Tennessee Pass was no longer required
for direct service), but a problem still remained: for transcontinental
service, the Union Pacific's more northerly line was far less mountainous (and,
as a result, several hours faster). The D&RGW's solution was its "fast
freight" philosophy, which employed multiple diesel locomotives pulling
short, frequent trains. This philosophy helps to explain why the D&RGW,
despite its proximity to one of the nation's most productive coal mining
regions, retired coal-fueled steam locomotives as quickly as new, replacement
diesels could be purchased. By 1956, the D&RGW's standard-gauge steam
locomotives had been retired and scrapped. The reason for this was that unlike
steam locomotives, diesel locomotives could easily be combined, using the
diesels' multiple unit capabilities, to equip each train with the optimum
horsepower which was needed to meet the D&RGW's aggressive schedule.
The D&RGW's sense of its
unique geographical challenge found expression in the form of the California
Zephyr, a passenger train which was jointly operated with the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) from Chicago to Denver, the D&RGW
from Denver to Salt Lake City, and the Western Pacific Railroad from Salt Lake
City to Oakland, California (with ferry and bus connections to San Francisco).
Unable to compete with the Union Pacific's faster, less mountainous route and
39 3/4-hour schedules, the California Zephyr offered a more leisurely journey
a "rail cruise" with ample vistas of the Rockies. Although the
California Zephyr ran at full capacity and turned a modest profit from its 1949
inception through the late 1950s, by the mid-1960s the train was profitable
only during the late spring, summer, and fall. In 1970, Western Pacific,
claiming multimillion-dollar losses, dropped out. However, the D&RGW
refused to join the national Amtrak system, and continued to operate its share
of the Zephyr equipment as the Rio Grande Zephyr between Denver and Salt Lake
City. By 1983, however, citing continued losses in revenue, the D&RGW
decided to get out of the passenger business altogether and join Amtrak. With
this move, Amtrak rerouted the San Francisco Zephyr to the Moffat Road line and
rebranded it as the current incarnation of the California Zephyr.
Even as the D&RGW exploited
the best new standard-gauge technology to compete with other transcontinental
carriers, the railroad continued to operate the surviving steam-powered
narrow-gauge lines, including the famed narrow-gauge line between Durango and
Silverton, Colorado. Most of the remaining narrow-gauge trackage was abandoned
in the 1950s and 1960s. At the end of 1970, it operated 1,903 miles (3,063 km)
of road on 3,227 miles (5,193 km) of track; that year it carried 7,733
ton-miles of revenue freight and 21 million passenger-miles.
Two of the most scenic routes
survived in operation by the D&RGW until they were sold to tourist railroad
operators. The Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad assumed operation of the line
between Antonito, Colorado, and Chama, New Mexico, in 1970. The last D&RGW
narrow-gauge line, from Durango to Silverton, was sold in 1981 to the Durango
and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, exactly one hundred years after the line
went into operation.
Consolidation with Southern
Pacific
In 1988, Rio Grande Industries,
the company that controlled the D&RGW under the direction of Philip
Anschutz, purchased the Southern Pacific Transportation Company (SP). The
D&RGW used Southern Pacific's name with SP due to its name recognition among
shippers. In time, the D&RGW's fast freight philosophy gave way to SP's
long-established practice of running long, slow trains. A contributing factor
was the rising cost of diesel fuel, a trend that set in after the 1973 oil
crisis, which gradually undermined the D&RGW's fuel-consuming "fast
freight" philosophy. By the early 1990s, the combined Rio Grande/Southern
Pacific system had lost much of the competitive advantage that made it
attractive to transcontinental shippers, and became largely dependent on
hauling the high-quality coal produced in the mine fields of Colorado and Utah.
D&RGW locomotives retained
their reporting marks and colors after the consolidation with the Southern
Pacific and would do so until the Union Pacific merger. The one noticeable
change was to Southern Pacific's "Bloody Nose" paint scheme. The
serif font on the sides of the locomotives was replaced by the Rio Grande's
"speed lettering", which was utilized on all SP locomotives built or
repainted after the merger.
On September 11, 1996, Anschutz
sold the combined D&RGW/SP system with the parent company Southern Pacific
Rail Corporation to the Union Pacific Corporation, partly in response to the
earlier merger of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe which formed the Burlington
Northern and Santa Fe Railway. As the Union Pacific absorbed the D&RGW into
its system, signs of the fabled mountain railroad's existence are slowly fading
away. D&RGW 5371, the only original D&RGW locomotive in full Rio Grande
paint on the Union Pacific, was retired by UP in December, 2008. As previously
promised by UP, the D&RGW 5371 was donated to the Utah State Railroad
Museum at Ogden's Union Station on August 17, 2009, and will reside in the
Eccles Rail Center at the south end of the building. The museum is located at
25th Street and Wall Ave in Ogden, Utah. Many other Rio Grande locomotives
still run in service with Union Pacific but have been
"patch-renumbered," with a patch applied over the locomotive's number
and the number boards replaced. This method allows the locomotives to be
numbered into the Union Pacific's roster but is cheaper than fully repainting
the engine into UP Armour Yellow.
In 2006, Union Pacific unveiled
UP 1989, an EMD SD70ACe painted in a stylized version of the D&RGW color
scheme. This unit is one of several SD70ACe locomotives the UP has painted in
stylized colors to help preserve the image of the railroads it has merged; the
others are Missouri Pacific Railroad, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, Chicago
and North Western Railway, Southern Pacific Railroad, and Western Pacific
Railroad.
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