Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – March 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
This spot between Salida and Cleora is not exactly a “ghost town,” since it never was a town. It was a siding named Barrel, where the railroad used a rotary dump to transfer limestone from the narrow-gauge cars that served the Monarch Quarry to the standard-gauge cars that served the CF&I steel mill in Pueblo. The machinery was erected in 1924, and was used until 1956 when the Monarch branch was converted to standard-gauge; the branch was abandoned in 1984.
