FL9

Where Rio Grande and Santa Fe track crews once battled and trains regularly ran far below the Royal Gorge suspension bridge, today the only part of the old Tennessee Pass line that sees regular service is just west of Pueblo.  The Royal Gorge Route’s passenger train runs beside the Arkansas River between Canon City and Parkdale on the west end of the deep canyon.

Here in early September of 2001 we see the passenger train with RGR’s F-units 403 and 402 emerging from the east end of the gorge as the rock walls begin to fall back from the tracks and the river also widens out as it approaches Canon City.

Four-of-a-kind is a good hand in poker, and also makes for a good locomotive lashup when it consists of four Rio Grande tunnel motors.  The quartet seen here is pulling an empty coal train westbound out of Salida, Colorado just before sunset as a late afternoon thunderstorm looms in the background near the Royal Gorge.

There are already two shots of this train from August of 1998 in the D&RGW album, but this was to be the last full Rio Grande lashup I would ever photograph, let alone on the Tennessee Pass line.  It is hard for me to get enough of it……

Today’s Colorado slide from the past takes us down to the banks of the Arkansas River near Cotopaxi on the now closed ex-D&RGW Tennessee Pass Line.  A loaded taconite ore train is westbound in August of 1998 with a total of six SP AC4400’s split into groups of two’s on the point and midtrain and on the rear.

The Arkansas River still runs placidly through this canyon, but the rusted rails have not felt the weight of a train in many years now.

Today’s slide takes us to southern Colorado as a loaded coal train is seen climbing the southbound grade out of Pueblo, Colorado at Salt Creek Junction on July 28th in 1985.

Mixed in with the five BN SD40-2’s on the point is an experimental fuel tender that was connected to all the units in the lashup with the hopes of cutting down on refuleing stops between the mines and power plants.