Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – September 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
The rails remain in place on the Tennessee Pass line from Cañon City through the Royal Gorge to Salida and north to Buena Vista, Leadville (actually, Malta), Minturn and Dotsero.
But years have passed since a train crossed the line. When the Union Pacific acquired the Southern Pacific in 1996, the Denver & Rio Grande Western was part of the deal, and the UP proposed to abandon the slow and high Tennessee Pass line because its other routes could handle the traffic.
However, the Union Pacific’s other trans-continental routes (Overland through Wyoming, Moffat due west of Denver, Sunset across New Mexico and Arizona) aren’t handling the traffic, according to a front-page story in the July 22 edition of theWall Street Journal:
“Parts of the Union Pacific’s network have come close to seizing up … Freight yards and entire trains have been stuck for days. The railroad can’t move empty cars quickly enough to pick up shipments, which are taking days or even weeks longer than they should to reach their destinations, if the railroad is able to carry them at all.”
The railroad has responded by hiring more people, and with some track improvements in Nebraska and Arizona. But there was no announcement that operations would be resumed on the Tennessee Pass Line which is technically “out of service,” rather than “abandoned.”
