What’s next for the Tennessee Pass line

Article by Ken Stitzel

Transportation – August 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE RUSTY, WEED-GROWN TRACKS of the Union Pacific Railroad run along the Arkansas and Eagle rivers from the Royal Gorge over Tennessee Pass and down through the I-70 ski valleys. The empty rails hardly resemble the transcontinental mainline that boasted 15 to 20 trains a day only five years ago.

[Map of former D&RG RR]

But, wait! Look both ways at those railroad crossings! You may see a curious yellow train with a cab on one end, a crane in the middle, and something like a phone booth on the other end. Or you may have to wait for a work train trundling by with gondola cars full of junk. Clearly the railroad isn’t quite dead.

Does the yellow train herald the return of a daily parade of long rumbling freights? No, it belongs to the Herzog Contracting Corporation, assigned to clean up old creosoted tie ends as part of the settlement of a lawsuit by the Environmental Protection Agency — the creosote pollutes the streams next to the tracks. The train returned this summer, accompanied by occasional work trains to haul away the debris.

So, are these oddball trains merely the final curtain on more than 120 years of railroading? Perhaps not. Join me for a whirlwind look at the history of rails on Tennessee Pass and a murky future that depends on two giant railroads, one short railroad, a possible new railroad, black diamonds, global warming, sodium bicarbonate, tunnel ventilation, rocks, commuters, and (wouldn’t you know it) government.

120 Years of Railroading

The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG) first laid rails over Tennessee Pass in 1881 as part of a branch line from Salida to Leadville, Gilman, and Red Cliff. The branch became the main route to Salt Lake City when the D&RG converted to standard gauge in 1889.

In 1934, the renamed Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) took control of the Denver & Salt Lake railroad (which had been a competing line that ran west out of Denver via the Moffat Tunnel and ended in the coalfields around Craig). The D&RGW built a new connection between the two railroads at Dotsero, providing a through route that ran due west from Denver.

Despite the less mountainous tracks of the rival UP through southern Wyoming, the D&RGW made a decent living for itself, using Tennessee Pass to haul ore, general freight, and coal from the North Fork of the Gunnison River, and using the Moffat route for priority traffic and coal trains from the Craig area.

The D&RGW grew. In 1982, it won access from Pueblo to Kansas City as a condition of the merger of the Union Pacific (UP) and Missouri Pacific railroads. In 1985, Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz acquired the D&RGW and then merged it into the massive Southern Pacific (SP) railroad in 1988.

Now part of a corridor connecting California to Chicago, Tennessee Pass saw 20 or more trains a day. Despite many problems, SP did well enough to steal one of the most lucrative rail contracts in the west away from UP. As a result, it hauled massive trains of iron ore from upper Minnesota over Tennessee Pass to feed Geneva Steel in Utah. SP also aggressively marketed the clean-burning coal that it hauled from Colorado and Utah.

Other mergers followed. In 1994, the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad formed a system that stretched from Seattle to Chicago to Florida to Los Angeles. Claiming self-defense, Anschutz sought out the other giant railroad in the west, UP. Despite protests of anticompetitiveness, in 1996 the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) approved the merger — though it also required UP to let BNSF run trains on the Moffat route.

The UP/SP merger seemed to doom Tennessee Pass, since the UP planned to abandon the route. With its steep grades, the Tennessee Pass route required expensive helper locomotives for most eastbound trains to get across the pass from Minturn.

In a hurry to show merger savings to Wall Street, UP rerouted trains through Wyoming, and ran the last through freight over Tennessee Pass in August 1997. Soon afterwards, UP closed the line between Leadville and Gypsum, and sold 11 miles of track through the Royal Gorge to two joint purchasers: Rock & Rail, a new quarry operation at Parkdale, and the new Canon City and Royal Gorge tourist operation.

Using an existing connection through Denver, UP sold off the eastern connection of the Tennessee Pass line in Kansas and put the Colorado part — the so-called “Towner line” from Pueblo to the Kansas border — up for immediate abandonment.

[Herzog Train]

Tennessee Pass was listed for future abandonment, but the STB required UP to prove it could handle the rerouted traffic before tearing up the tracks. Many rail fans and analysts saw a dark future for railroading of any kind in Colorado. UP had cheaper coal in Wyoming. Without coal, rail traffic would dry up.

Service from Pueblo to Leadville continued until the Black Cloud mine closed in March, 1999. Rail fans rushed to get photographs and speculated gloomily about the future. Residents of Central Colorado enjoyed more peace and quiet. Historical-minded folks noted the halt of train traffic after almost 120 years.

A sort of revival happened in 1998. UP removed Tennessee Pass from its abandonment list. Coal traffic from the North Fork branch east of Montrose had grown. Geneva Steel in Utah wanted to ship steel to Mexico. UP actually planned to re-open the route in late winter 1998 until a fire in the Sanborn Creek Mine cut North Fork coal traffic by a third and Geneva Steel went into bankruptcy protection. Although the mine reopened and Geneva still produces steel, plans for the railroad went back into limbo.

Congested and Getting Worse

What could revive the fortunes of Tennessee Pass? Congestion on the Moffat route remains the most likely factor. From the beginning, the Moffat route had a hard time handling the extra trains from Tennessee Pass. Traffic remains heavy (upwards of 24 trains per day), and gridlock is commonplace. The entire UP system nearly collapsed in 1997 trying to handle service problems that followed the SP merger — and the Moffat route sometimes seems on the verge of a continuous replay of the disaster. Trains plug sidings for days. Crews routinely “die on the law” when they work up to a federally mandated limit of 12 hours, after which they are obliged to stop the train, no matter where.

UP can’t add much capacity to the line, either. It shares the route with the BNSF railroad, two Amtrak trains a day, and sometimes the Winter Park ski train. The Moffat Tunnel is too low to allow some types of freight cars to pass through — and every train leaves a pall of diesel fumes through the six-mile bore. Massive ventilation equipment blows the smoke out, but it takes time.

Diamonds, Please, Black Diamonds

Though controversial and subject to change, President Bush’s energy policy could increase the demand for Colorado and Utah coal and potentially clog the Moffat route with more trains. Even before the election, coal mines on the North Fork branch planned to increase production this year, adding one or two daily trains a day. UP sometimes gets so desperate to keep traffic off the Moffat route that eastbound North Fork trains actually go west to Salt Lake City before turning east to travel across southern Wyoming. By the time the train reaches Denver, it has traveled an incredible 700 extra miles!

To UP, the detour is worth it if it prevents gridlock and uses existing manpower. But you have to wonder how long those economies will hold up.

Rocks, Please

Some folks speculate about less exotic rocks bolstering another push for new rail traffic. The construction boom in the I-70 corridor requires lots of raw materials, including aggregates to make asphalt and concrete. Only a few local gravel deposits remain without houses and golf courses on top, and some neighbors are already grumbling about quarries next to their dream condos. Although one proposal to haul gravel by rail from the upper Arkansas Valley never got off the ground two years ago, the idea remains. There is a lot of rock available from the old mines around Leadville, and the new Rock & Rail operation has aggressively marketed its wares to the Front Range builders, acquiring surplus tracks near Colorado Springs and Denver for deliveries. It seems natural for someone to haul rocks over Tennessee Pass.

[InContentAdTwo]

Yet, what seems like a lot of rock to a short-line railroad may not provide attractive economics to UP — which may not want to talk to you until you can ship hundreds of cars a month.

Have a Soda

It’s not rock, but good old sodium bicarbonate has already boosted rail traffic. Last year, the American Soda Company opened a multimillion-dollar facility near Parachute. UP’s tenant on the Moffat route, BNSF, has already hauled in 80 miles of pipe for a double pipeline. Produced by a relatively benign mining process, the new plant will start full rail shipments sometime this year.

Press blurbs have given estimates of 130 rail cars a week once production gears up — another train or two per week on the crowded Moffat route.

Have another Railroad

A proposed brand-new railroad could provide another source of revenue. The proposed line would extend from Rifle for 135 miles into the country between Craig and Vernal, Utah, to tap oil, coal, and phosphate fields. Economic development interests in both Colorado and Utah are trying to line up funding for more research, but studies have shown that the line could generate 10 million annual tons of freight traffic from the phosphate traffic alone. And that averages out to one or two big trains a day.

The Grand Junction Sentinel quoted Michael Furtney, a spokesperson for UP: “I doubt any freight ‘opportunity’ would be sufficient to re-open Tennessee Pass for freight service.” Yet the new traffic would certainly add to the pressure on the Moffat line.

Ironically, the state government also played a role in killing trains on Tennessee Pass and may help bring them back. Despite the state’s support of the UP/SP merger, the ink barely dried on the abandonment papers for the Towner Line before the state stepped in. Citing the risk of negative impact to farmers, the legislature drafted a law to let the state purchase the abandoned line and lease it to an operator. Despite some fits and starts in the selection process and paying $10 million for a line with limited economic prospects, the state eventually leased the Towner Line to the grandly named Colorado, Kansas and Pacific railroad, which now serves the few grain elevators along the line.

With the Towner acquisition law in place and another railroad right-of-way preservation bill passing last fall, the state could someday acquire the Tennessee Pass rails. A 1997 state study on future passenger railroads identified part of the Tennessee Pass route near I-70 as a “high priority corridor” that should be preserved.

Local government has also expressed interest. Last fall the Eagle County commissioners talked to UP. They had noticed the crowded roads and the empty railroad. Why not run some passenger trains or light rail to carry all those folks to and from their jobs — or at least put a bike trail along that nice, empty railroad grade?

But UP spokespersons objected to such plans; they cited liability concerns and said that the near-capacity train traffic on the Moffat line could cause Tennessee Pass to re-open someday. Despite many negative pronouncements about the future of the line, UP admitted that Tennessee Pass represents “surplus capacity.”

[UP 844 in Salida]

If traffic gets too heavy on the Moffat, UP can re-open the dormant Pass line to reduce the congestion. “The STB is sensitive to removing capacity,” said UP’s Michael Ongerth, quoted in The Vail Daily. “Surplus capacity is precious. Since the merger, Union Pacific has also concluded that we should slow down and be judicious with our capacity reduction.”

After approving the merger that may have killed Tennessee Pass, the hand of the federal government is still exerting influence. The STB’s five-year oversight on the UP/SP merger expired in May, 2001. UP can now abandon the route with only token federal jurisdiction. Yet, the UP’s 1997 service crisis has made the politics of abandonment more difficult and there has been talk in Washington about revisiting the merger.

John Bromley, the head of UP public relations, stated, “We’re not going to progress abandonment proceedings until we are sure it will be granted.”

Keep Looking at the Crossing

If you’ve made it this far, you might correctly conclude that despite all the possibilities for new railroad traffic to re-open Tennessee Pass, little can happen overnight. The Herzog train may return this summer; a work train or two may haul in empty gondola cars and haul away the full ones. But fleets of long freights are not yet poised to rumble down the Arkansas. UP isn’t saying much. Likely the big railroad will keep the tracks empty but intact, a spare railroad line in the back pocket that can be dusted off for an emergency.

Just in case, though, keep looking both ways when you go over that railroad crossing.

Ken Stitzel, a member of the Tennessee Pass Underground, has a checkered past and family history of stealing rides from railroads in Central Colorado. He lives along the Front Range, and works for a Fortune 500 company which would prefer not to be associated with certain of his hobbies.