Grassroots Railroad Sports?

NickD said:

NickD said:

#2102 on Philadelphia–Schwenksville trip at Tamaqua, Sept. 19, 1964.

Sadly, I learned that while Reading & Northern and Norfolk Southern still serve Tamaqua, the line shown here was relocated many years ago. So there will be no recreating this shot once Reading & Northern gets #2102 operational

Nearly all of my family was from the Tamaqua area.  I recognize some of the buildings in that picture.

The "Astor Cut".  Lord Astor whacked down a redwood, had a special rail car made and shipped it to London just to so he could make a table top and win a bet!

Surprise!  It wouldn't fit through the door so now it sits next to the Thames.

Duke said:

NickD said:

NickD said:

#2102 on Philadelphia–Schwenksville trip at Tamaqua, Sept. 19, 1964.

Sadly, I learned that while Reading & Northern and Norfolk Southern still serve Tamaqua, the line shown here was relocated many years ago. So there will be no recreating this shot once Reading & Northern gets #2102 operational

Nearly all of my family was from the Tamaqua area.  I recognize some of the buildings in that picture.

For a brief stretch, Reading & Northern was running their Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway trips out of Tamaqua instead of Jim Thorpe, like they normally do. Jim Thorpe got greedy and demanded some $100k a year "entertainment tax" on top of all the other taxes that R&N was already paying them. Andy Muller, CEO of Reading & Northern, instead said "Screw you, we won't run any trains to Jim Thorpe and you'll get nothing" and ran Lehigh Gorge Scenic out of Tamaqua and none of the Reading & Northern's passenger trains stopped in Jim Thorpe either. After a few months of that, Jim Thorpe cried uncle and dropped any notion of an "entertainment tax" and R&N came back into town.

The whole situation with Lehigh Gorge Scenic and R&N is kind of confusing. Lehigh Gorge Scenic is operated by R&N, with R&N crews, R&N equipment, and on R&N rails. It is the short daily 7 mile trip that always departs from Jim Thorpe and runs up to Penn Haven and back. They either use the rebuilt GP30s (called a GP39RN) or, less frequently, 4-6-2 #425, and old clerestory roof coaches, rebuilt depowered EMUs and open-air cars. Then, Reading & Northern has a separate passenger department that runs longer trips on a less regular basis. Like dinner trains on their RDCs from Reading to Tamaqua, or day trips out of Port Clinton behind their F-units, or fall foliage trains from Reading to Penobscot. They typically use stainless-steel Budd cars and include some dome cars in the train.

Their announcement on #2102 is that for the time being, #425 will be restricted mostly to Lehigh Gorge Scenic, while #2102 will haul the longer R&N passenger trips. I know last year, the maiden voyage of the R&N F-units was a 12-hour, 230-mile excursion over every inch of R&N's rails with multiple stops and photo runbys. I'm hoping that they'll do a similar trip with the #2102 this year.

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 4-4-0 Camelback #992 at Syracuse, NY.

I know I've posted about this building I designed about 20 years ago in Slower Lower Delaware.  I believe the locomotive was a DL&W unit:

Sorry; it's really hard to find good pics of it.

In reply to Duke :

Not DL&W. There are only 2 DL&W steam engines left: 2-6-0 #565 at Steamtown in Scranton, and camelback 4-4-0 #592 at St. Louis Museum of Transportation. They also tried to donate a Q4-class 4-8-4 "Pocono" to Scranton, but Scranton wanted the DL&W to disassemble it, truck it up to Nay Aug Park and reassemble it out of their own pocket. DL&W said "Nuts to that" and cut it up.

That is former Queen Anne's RR #3, ex-Wilmington & Western #3, exx-Wawa & Concordville 3, exxx-U.S. Navy 3 from Philadelphia Navy Yard. It's a United States Army Transportation Corp. S-100 0-6-0T.

Wilmington & Western found it had the guts to haul trains, but it was difficult to keep the steam pressure up when working it hard, which was why they sold it to Queen Anne's. When the bridge at Lewes got in poor condition and wasn't financially feasible to repair, that was the end of Queen Anne's. That rail line has since been torn up and converted to a train.

The coaches are ex-New Haven.

In reply to NickD :

Thanks.  It was a while ago and I've forgotten the provenance of this stuff.

I know the owner bought the coaches out of a field somewhere.  The restaurant was originally called The Royal Zephyr, I think, but they must have folded.

In reply to Duke :

It's now The Salted Rim Margarita Bar

There are very few preserved steam locomotives from any of the anthracite roads. Close proximity to each other and relying so heavily on the anthracite mines for income meant that they were among the first lines to hit financial hard times and almost all dieselized early, and they needed the trade-in money from every steam locomotive they could trade in. 

Central Railroad of New Jersey has two preserved steam engines. They donated camelback 4-4-2 #592 to the B&O Railroad Museum and 0-6-0 #113 was sold to Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company in '53 and retired from there in 1960. It sat outside and deteriorated until the 1980s, but has been restored and is now operational. CNJ also fixed up camelback 4-6-0 #774 and ran excursions with it, but refused to donate it to a museum and photographer Don Wood was unable to raise the money in time to save it from the torch. None of their handsome Pacifics, camelback 4-8-0s Mastodons, 4-6-4 commuter tank engines or big Mikados were saved.

Delaware & Hudson put every engine they had to the torch. I don't think there was any thought of preservation. I've never heard of any D&H engines being offered and refused, or engines being accidentally scrapped after being set aside. From their weirdly European Pacifics and Northerns, to their low-speed Wooten firebox equipped 2-8-0s, to their weirdly dainty-looking 4-6-6-4s, every last one of them gone. In the '70s, to celebrate their anniversary, they ended up leasing Reading #2102 and disguising it as D&H #302 for some excursions.

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western preserved two, as I mentioned. The 4-4-0, #952, was donated to St. Louis. The Mogul, #565, was sold to Dansville & Mount Morris, who operated it until they dieselized (with the last GE 44-tonner built) and then bounced around the northeast, between Black River & Western, Morris County Central, New Hope & Ivyland, a restaurant, and eventually ended up back in Scranton through the works of Don Ball Jr. It sits partially disassembled at Steamtown after they started a restoration and then had to stop when they forgot to fill out some important National Parks Service paperwork. It is a thoroughly worn-out engine, many parts went missing amongst all it's past owners and supposedly many parts have been lost or accidentally disposed of at Steamtown. And then there was the aforementioned incident with the attempt to donate a 4-8-4.

Erie Railroad owned the only camelback articulated engines, a huge fleet of Russian Decapods, a variety of good-looking Pacifics and perfected the fast-freight Berkshire. Nobody called it the Weary Erie any more after those Berskhires showed up. And not a one of them survived. Erie sent one Pacific, #2453, to South Korea after the Korean War to help rebuild. Although many hold out hope it survived, according to a South Korean historian, not only is the Erie engine long gone, so are all the other US steam engines sent over there (there was a number of PRR and C&O 0-6-0s).

Lehigh & Hudson River was a short little bridge line with a relatively small fleet of steam locomotives. But there was variety. They had some heavy Consolidations (the 2-8-0 was a favorite of anthracite lines), some USRA Mikados and even direct copies of Boston & Maine's huge R-1d Mountains. None were saved, all traded in on Alco RS-3s. The L&HR would meet its demise when the Poughkeepsie Bridge mysteriousl burned and severed it's vital connection to the Penn Central.

Lehigh & New England also operated a mix of steam locomotives. Camelback Consolidations, secondhand PRR Mikados (one of very few instances of PRR power showing up on other lines I can find) and some monster Decapods. All that remains is a single 0-6-0, #207 at Illinois Railway Museum. It was built for switching on sharp curves in the streets of Catawissa, NY and the center drivers were originally blind (flangeless). It was later used on dock trackage in Detroit (hence how it ended up in Illinois) and the center drivers now have flanges, however. It's still rather unique, with double swinging firebox doors, a Wooten firebox, automatic lubricators and a front-end throttle.

Lehigh Valley invented a number of important wheel configurations: the 2-8-0 Consolidation, the 2-10-0 Decapod, the 2-8-2 Mikado and the 4-6-2 Pacific were all inventions of the Lehigh Valley. They also owned some truly unusual Camelbacks, in 4-6-2, 2-8-2 and 2-6-2 configurations (most Camelbacks lacked a trailing truck to make room for the big firebox), some freight-only Pacifics and a ton of very modern 4-8-4 "Wyomings". All of them are gone. A small 4-2-4 track inspection locomotive, named Dorothy, was sold off by the LV to a private owner, but then scrapped in a WWII scrap drive. They also tried to donate a 4-8-4 Wyoming to Sayre, PA, where they had their biggest facilities. Sayre turned it down and LV scrapped it instead.

New York, Ontario & Western holds the dubious honor of being the first US Class I railroad to file for abandonment. Poor routing that missed many major population centers but had many bridges and cuts and tunnels, the loss of milk traffic to trucks, being a latecomer to the anthracite fields and getting in bed with the less-profitable mines, and the Oswego port facilities' failure to develop all conspired to bankrupt the line in '35, force it to dieselize very rapidly after WWII, and run it out of business in '57. Like many anthracite roads, they had a sizable amount of camelback 2-8-0s, 2-6-0s and 4-6-0s, as well as some big and unloved rear-cab 2-10-2 "Bullmooses" and some rather nice light Mountains, including the Y-2 class, which were a direct-copy of a NYC L-2 Mohawk. Five Y-1 Mountains were sold to Savannah & Atlanta but scrapped rather shortly after. Five Y-2 Mountains were sold to Bangor & Aroostook, but again, all were scrapped within a short time. The only NYO&W engine that could possibly still exist is #109, a 2-6-0 Camelback built at the Rome Locomotive Works in Rome, NY. At some point it was shipped to Cuba, along with 3 RF&P locomotives. It's been a long time since anyone has seen or heard of it though, so it likely does not exist anymore, sadly.

Reading is the only anthracite road to preserve large, modern road power, with four of their T-1 4-8-4s (rebuilt from older I-10sa Consolidations during WWII). Like other anthracite roads, they had big Wooten firebox locomotives; 2-8-0s, 2-8-8-0s, 2-10-0s. They also built some monster 2-10-2s out of their old articulated engines, and ordered the last 4-6-2s in the US. They had some real throughbred flier 4-4-2 camelbacks as well. There are 4 Reading T-1s, #2100, #2101, #2102 and #2124, preserved, with two being restored to operation, one doomed to never operate again due to severe fire damage and the other nicely cosmetically displayed at Steamtown. There is also 0-4-0 camelback #1187, formerly at Strasburg and now at Age of Steam Roundhouse with a possible operational restoration in the future, and shop switcher 0-6-0T #1251, the last steam locomotive to operate on a US Class I line. A 2-2-2 inspection locomotive, the Black Diamond, is at St. Louis, and an 1838 Englis-built 0-4-0, the Rocket, is at the Franklin Institute. 

Does that stack double as a water catch?

914Driver said:

Does that stack double as a water catch?

Might be some sort of cinder collector. It looks like a pipe runs down between the rails, where it deposits them. Colorado & Southern used something similar on their narrow gauge operations. The official title was a Ridgway Spark Arrestor, although it was nicknamed a "bear trap". It's the big box on top of the stack, that then dumped them alongside the ballast. And yes, they tended to start fires in the grass alongside the track, but crews typically followed the train to put out fires and it was easier to stop a fire that just started along the right of way rather than one half a mile out in a field or forest.

The Cincinatti, New Orleans & Texas Pacific had some strange smokestacks as well. A subsidiary of Southern, CNO&TP was nicknamed "The Rathole Division", due to a bunch  of tunnels, 27 to be exact. They were all very old and very small, and not reinforced or lined or well-ventilated. Due to concerns about the exhaust blasts damaging the roof of the tunnel, they had a system called a Wimble Smoke Duct that used a long pipe that ran from the smokestack almost halfway back to the cab and exited horizontally. When out in the open, the exhaust vented normally, but before entering a tunnel, a section slid back, capped off the stack and redirected the exhaust. I can't imagine it was exactly popular with the engineer and fireman, but it kept the tunnels from being damaged.

There is a version on a CNO&TP 2-10-2 that exited behind the cab. I can only find one photo, and it isn't great quality, but it is strange.

My dad's tea cup. 

A Southern MS-2 Mikado with a Wimble Smoke Duct

And another odd one, a Ferrocarilles de Mexico engine with a Y-shaped smoke stack, to divert it to the sides and keep it from damaging tunnel roofs.

In reply to Hasbro (Forum Supporter) :

Nice. My father's mother's uncle ran the New York Central's accounting department for the Central Division out of the Utica, NY train station. The railroad actually wanted him to run the entire accounting department and offered him the job. It would require him to move to New York City though, and he was in his 70s and looking to retire, plus he saw the way the Central's finances were headed and figured it was better to get out while the getting was good. My father still recalls his mother taking him down to Utica and them going up to one of the upstairs offices to visit him while he was at work, although he can't remember which office it was.

In reply to NickD :

Neat. Maybe Dad knew him as he worked there also around the late 50s. He also lamented NYC's financials and was apoplectic when they started talking the Penn merger. When they merged Dad moved us to the Philly area to position us in a desired area and took an early retirement. I was 12 at the time so missed working for NYC. My two older brothers while in high school worked summers out of the Boston yard laying track. My oldest brother also ran the elevator in the NYC building in NY City when he was even younger on weekends during the school months. Lots of good memories and stories.

In reply to Hasbro (Forum Supporter) :

My father's favorite uncle also worked for the NYC and during the late '50s and early '60s when the NYC was winding down operations on the Adirondack Division, they started renting out the section houses to employees in the fall and winter as hunting lodges. They weren't being used, and it was a way to make some income off the property. So, he and two of his friends rented out a section house in the winter, and included in the deal was a little hand car that had been converted to self-propulsion with an old washing machine-sourced gasoline engine. At the time, the Central was still running a few trains on the Adirondack Division, so one person would operate the car, and one would sit at the front of the car keeping a forward lookout for trains and the other would sit on the back keeping a rear lookout. It was light enough that two guys could pick it up and heave it off the rails to let the train by. Well, one day they were motoring along and the guy keeping rear watch got mesmerized by the snow that the car was kicking up and kind of zoned out. The guy operating the car happens to look back and there is an RS-3 motoring behind them and approaching fast. They all had to bail off and get the thing off the tracks before it got run over.

ATSF used a pair of different stacks on their 2900 and 3700 series 4-8-4s. For the locomotives assigned to the Valley Division, which was rife with tunnels, they had a 90 elbow that could flip forward and redirect the smoke backwards to protect the tunnels. Crews hated them because, while it protected the tunnel, it blasted it right back at the cab and made conditions intolerable when going through a tunnel.

Also, they had an extendible stack. As engines got more powerful and needed larger diameter boilers, the smoke stacks got shorter to work within existing clearances. The problem is, a short stack doesn't blow the exhaust clear of the engine. Instead the wind funnels it along the boiler and into the cab, impeding visibility and breathing. Also, a taller smokestack improves draft. So ATSF fitted many of their Northerns with a smoke stack that could extend/retract. When out on the prairie, you extended the stack and got the smoke above the boundary layer, and then when you came to a tunnel, you retracted it down. ATSF #2926 is still equipped with one and it is operational. I have to wonder how many of them got ripped off on tunnel portals when crews forgot to retract them.

ATSF's stack extension operating. 

Denver & Rio Grande Western fans are likely rejoicing at the news that Union Pacific is working on a deal to sell the old Tennessee Pass route, which would see trains over the route for the first time since 1997, when Union Pacific acquired the line through the buyout of Southern Pacific.

In the 1880s, the Denver & Rio Grande (the Western came later) lacked a cost effective way over the Rocky Mountains. Their only direct route between Denver and Salt Lake City was over their 3'-gauge narrow gauge line route, the Marshall Pass Line, it had opened between Salida, Montrose, and Grand Junction in 1883 . This was really inefficient, because the narrow gauge line was a low-speed operation and it required unloading and loading freight because you can't interchange a standard gauge car onto a narrow gauge line obviously. 

They began building a standard-gauge route that went north of Leadville and followed the Colorado River. In anticipation of building this new line, they also upgraded their route between Denver, Pueblo, and Leadville to standard gauge as well. The D&RG had originally planned to be all narrow-gauge and then as the narrow gauge craze passed, it was slowly converted to standard gauge, although some lines stayed narrow gauge (and steam powered) into the late 1960s. In the late 1880s, construction began with the hardest section to construct: the Tennessee Pass Tunnel. In 1890 the D&RG was able to complete the new line to its previous connection at Grand Junction, Colorado (where it connected with the Rio Grande Western that reached Salt Lake City) and around the same time its tunnel over the pass opened. Initially, narrow gauge rails were run through it until the rest of the route was ready for standard-gauging. By late 1890, the section from Salida to Malta had been converted to dual gauge track, so as to not leave the Blue River Branch as an isolated narrow gauge chunk. Everything west, Tennessee Pass, Glenwood Canyon, and the Aspen Branch, was subsequently converted to pure standard gauge by the end of the year.

The 228-mile Tennessee Pass Line had some strange routing, was some pretty rough going, with grades above 3% in many places, requiring doubleheaders and pushers, and is the highest altitude mainline rail line in the US at 10,240 feet. But it allowed them to run trains straight through to Salt Lake City without unloading and reloading to change gauges and allowed the D&RG to pick up lucrative interchange traffic heading west from Denver and east from Salt Lake City. In 1903, they began double-tracking most of the line, because helpers returning to Minturn would tie up the entire line, although the tunnel in Deen remained single-track because their simply wasn't room to run another track.

In 1931 the D&RGW (the D&RG had acquired the Rio Grande Western in '21 and changed their name) took control of the Denver & Salt Lake Railway, which was famous for constructing the massive 6.21-mile Moffat Tunnel in 1928.  This route was just north of Denver and allowed for a much more direct connection with Salt Lake City after the D&RGW completed the Dotsero Cutoff to connect to it. After this, the Tennessee Pass Tunnel and route southward through Leadville became the railroad's secondary main line to Denver but it wasn't neglected. In 1945 the then Denver & Rio Grande Western constructed a new tunnel at around the same altitude as the original and 50' to the west. It was shorter in length and while it contained a 3% grade on the westward approach, the eastward heading contained just a 1.5% grade. Tennessee Pass was still a difficult and costly line to operate, but it allowed them to interchange with the Missouri Pacific at Pueblo, which was why they kept it open.

With booming demand for Colorado's cleaner coal in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to the Clean Air Act and the oil embargo, it made more sense to send the product over TP and directly to Pueblo for interchange with the MoPac, rather than going via the Moffat Route and then down the ATSF/D&RGW/Colorado & Southern "Joint Line" to Pueblo. However, management began to argue that having two mainline crossings of the Divide was redudant and more than the D&RGW could really afford, especially with the steep grades and frequent heavy snowfall that TP saw. In '87, the D&RGW experimented with shutting down Tennessee Pass by sending almost all the traffic over the Moffat Route. This dropped TP down to two trains a day and pushed Moffat to near-capacity.

In '88, Rio Grande Industries, who owned the D&RGW, purchased the Southern Pacific and the smaller D&RGW's corporate identity was slowly merged into the larger Espee. Management quickly began to streamline combined routes and wanted to run trains from SP's Bay Area to eastern location. Dhe additional traffic would be more than the Moffat could handle and some of the tunnels on the Front Range were known to have clearance issues with double-stacked containers. So a program was launched to transfer traffic back to TP and bring it in line with modern mainline standards. By the end of 1988, the line was officially back from the threshold of death. In only about eight years, the line went from two trains per day between Minturn and the summit to as many as thirty, including light helper sets. 

On September 11th, 1996 Southern Pacific and Union Pacific merged in reaction to the recently created Burlington Northern Santa Fe. One of the touted cost savings of the merger was be the elimination of Tennessee Pass, since UP planned to route all traffic east out of Denver on an upgraded Kansas Pacific line (called the Wyoming Line). The UP (ex-MoPac) line east from Pueblo would then also be abandoned as well, eliminating UP's own duplication between the ex-KP and the ex-MP lines east out of Colorado while removing the main reason for the Tennessee Pass' existence (the MP interchange at Pueblo).

Only just shy of a year after the UP-SP merger, the last through revenue train went over the pass. The Malta local trains continued to run from Pueblo to Malta until March of 1999, and beyond that only a few work trains plied the east side of the pass. Only the very western end of the route was still active. From Dotsero to Glenwood Springs, CO, the route forms part of the modern Union Pacific main as part of the line from Denver via Moffat Route and the Dotsero Cutoff. A local out of Grand Junction ran east beyond Dotsero several times a week to the drywall plant at Gypsum, but that was far as any regular train stepped onto the former Tennessee Pass line. From time to time, UP also stored coal hoppers on the unused stretch between Gypsum and Wolcott. UP did sell a portion of the line, from Canon City to Parkdale,  to the Canon City & Royal Gorge / Rock & Rail groups. Terms of the sale included the UP retaining the right to run freight trains on the line, serve local customers on the line and maintain dispatching authority for ALL trains on the line. Thus, while the CC&RG owns the track, it has to ask the UP for permission to use it. Additionally, UP freight trains, should there ever be any would take priority over any CC&RG and/or R&R trains.

So, why didn't Union Pacific abandon the Tennessee Pass Line? They originally filed for abandonment, and they weren't using the line but have continued to pay taxes and other expenses for over two decades on an asset that has generated exactly $0. A couple reasons: One, Union Pacific was concerned that if they abandoned the line, one of their competitors (chiefly BNSF) would purchase it and combine it with the Towner Line, which ran from Pueblo-Kansas City, that they were also abandoning at the same time and then and use it against them to reach Kansas City. Also, in 1997, Union Pacific had a rather embarrassing and very expensive service meltdown as a result of growing pains from all the recent merger. As a result of this, UP elected to forgo abandonment of several seemingly redundant lines which could conceivably be used for traffic in the future, however remote that might seem, on the theory that once a line is gone, it's gone for good. As such, UP informed the Surface Transportation Board  that, while it had discontinued service over the TP line it was no longer seeking to outright abandon the line. A third reason is that the line supposedly falls under a Strategic Rail classification by either the DHS or DoD. Essentially, in the event of a major war, or invasion, or crisis, the line could be fired up and large amounts of material and personnel moved over it without mucking up traffic or overloading other active lines.

That brings things to November of 2019. An agriculture firm controlled by billionaire New York City real estate magnates, KCVN LLC and its subsidiary, Colorado Pacific Railroad LLC, had purchased and reopened the Towner Line from previous owners who were making moves to scrap the line, and now wanted a direct western outlet for his grain business to the west coast via Tennessee Pass. Currently if they want to move grain west, either to flour mills at Salt Lake City/Ogden or Los Angeles, or for export from Pacific Northwest points along the Columbia River in Washington, the wheat must first move 250 miles east to Hutchinson, Kansas, and then be placed on another westbound UP line, along which it travels 250 miles back west just to reach the State of Colorado again, having traveled 500 miles without any net westward progress. They make an offer of $10 million and Uncle Pete shoots it down, saying they are in active discussions with another group to reactivate the line. 

But KCVN and Colorado Pacific say they could find no evidence that UP was talking with potential line suitors. So, they filed a feeder line application to gain control of the route, the same maneuver they used in 2018 to acquire and resuscitate the 121.9-mile Towner Line in eastern Colorado. Basically, the Surface Transportation Board has a procedure where you can force a Class I to sell you a line not in use for liquidation price ($8.8 million) if it meets certain requirements.

According to the STB "Feeder line applicants must demonstrate that:
• A sale is required by “the public convenience and necessity.”
• The current owner has no interest in providing service over the line.
• Current service is inadequate.
• The sale of a line will not have an adverse financial effect on the current owner.
• The sale will improve service."

The STB and UP shoot down this move, because it doesn't meet the definition of a feeder line, because they aren't offering passenger service so as to “meet the statutory test for public convenience and necessity.”. Even if this had gone through, Colorado Pacific would have forced UP to sell them a line that they didn't want to sell and then had to sit down and negotiate rates with UP for interchange. I can't imagine that would have gone well. UP likely would have crammed some insane interchange rates down their throat in retaliation. Union Pacific also asserted that they were still in talks with another undisclosed group over a possible sale.

Then an unredacted STB document accidentally outed Rio Grande Pacific as being the group that UP was in talks with, with RGP planning to operate the Tennessee Pass line under the Colorado Midland & Pacific name. Also particularly strange is that their official statement:  "To be clear, Colorado Midland & Pacific has no plan, intention, or means to operate oil trains [originating in the Uintah Basin] across the Tennessee Pass line. CMP has an agreement for a portion of the Tennessee Pass only – that is from Sage to Parkdale. CMP seeks to explore and develop commuter/passenger rail and local freight opportunities within that ~160-mile corridor, and we wish to do so in coordination and consultation with communities and planning agencies in the area statment is that they will be using the line" Estimates to get the line operational were somewhere around $200 million (including fixing a spot where two big damn boulders wiped out the tracks), and just local service and passenger service don't seem profitable enough to make that a worthwhile venture. 

In the meantime, people along the tracks are already pitching a fit and complaining to the STB. Example: "The railroad tracks of course gave us some hesitation, but it was explained that there has been no trains on these tracks in over 2 decades. The tracks were overgrown with vegetation, and the bridges and embankments in
disrepair. It seemed quite reasonable that the railroad was not likely to return." or "Should the trains run again on the Tennessee line, many of us could expect our property values to drop significantly, at a time when we would likely have to sell our homes at a large loss due to the proximity of the trains. For several retirees on our street- this was to be our last home, where we would have “quiet enjoyment” of our property till our last fish was caught." Or this real gem: "I know this is a formal filing, but at the risk of stepping out of accepted verbiage protocols, here is an analogy for you. A man divorces his wife after some years of marriage. He leaves her to her own resources. She struggles, but eventually builds a new life without him. 25 years later, he saunters back into her life and wants to rekindle the relationship. She, of course is not interested in the least. Too much has changed since he left. Her life is completely different now. Just like attempting to revive a relationship that has run its course- the return of this railroad into operation just doesn’t make sense anymore. I respectfully request you deny the continuance control exemption requested by Colorado, Midland & Pacific Railway Company." 

Basically, they're pissed because their realtor told them the line was abandoned and would never operate again when they bought the property and that wasn't true.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but passenger service over Tennessee Pass would be something to see. Wonder whether CM&PRwy will be friendly to steam operations or not.

Union Pacific's D&RGW heritage unit is really cool