Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – December 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
In October, the Chinese government announced completion of the world’s highest railroad line. The 720-mile route cost $3 billion to construct, and connects Golmud to Lhasa, Tibet. It crosses the Tibetan Plateau, sometimes called “the roof of the world.”
The railroad’s high point is at 16,640 feet — nearly half a mile above Colorado’s highest spot, 14,433-foot Mt. Elbert near Leadville. When passenger service begins next year, the cars will be sealed and pressurized like airplane cabins so that riders will avoid hypoxia.
The previous rail altitude record was held by the Peruvian Central Railroad. Its line into the Andes from Lima to Huanco tops out at 15,698 feet.
Colorado lines hold the American altitude records. The Manitou & Pikes Peak Railroad rises to 14,109 feet at the top of America’s best-known mountain. It’s a cog line, which uses a gear on the locomotive which turns against a toothed rail between the regular rails.
When we look at regular adhesion rail lines (just flanged wheels on regular tracks), the highest is the Leadville, Colorado & Southern. When the Climax Mine was running, the tracks reached about 11,500 feet at a mine building known as “the Summit County Warehouse.”
Nowadays, the LC&S tracks top out at 11,319 feet at the summit of Frémont Pass. The summer excursion trains from Leadville don’t go all the way to the top though, so the highest elevation reached by a standard railroad in the U.S. is about 11,000 feet.
As for through lines, Tennessee Pass holds the record at 10,239 feet. The rails are still in place, but the line has been out of service for this entire millennium. The 6.3-mile Moffat Tunnel’s apex is the highest point in use, at 9,257 feet. Both are former Denver & Rio Grande Western routes now owned by the Union Pacific.
The Moffat Tunnel just edges the 9,234-foot summit of Veta Pass on the line between Alamosa and Walsenburg, a former D&RGW route that was sold in 2003 to RailAmerica, a short-line operator.
Other Colorado altitude records over the years include the highest narrow-gauge line, 11,522 feet, on the D&RGW’s Ibex Mine spur east of Leadville, abandoned in 1944; highest standard-gauge, 11,660 feet at the summit of Rollins Pass on the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, abandoned after the Moffat Tunnel opened in 1928; highest narrow-gauge through line, 10,856 feet at the summit of Marshall Pass, abandoned by the D&RGW in 1956; highest narrow-gauge still operating, 10,015 feet on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR at the summit of Cumbres Pass between Antonito and Chama, N.M.
And if you’re curious, the Monarch Branch from Salida, dismantled in 1984, topped out at 10,028 feet. It did not hold any altitude records, but it was the steepest track on the entire D&RGW system, and had the railroad’s only switchbacks.
