From the lounge of Amtrak train 6.
I’m usually just a lurker here, but I like to declare my admiration
for the builders of that railroad and the beauty of the entire scene.
If somebody feels like telling a story about it, I’d like to hear.
How does this line fit into the scheme of things now-a-days?
John
Bond was near one end of the Rio Grande’s Dotsero Cutoff, which shortened considerably the distance between Denver and Salt Lake City when it was completed.
The line is now owned by Union Pacific. I know that it’s not the busiest main line they have, but it still gets a bit of traffic–one of the locals will have to tell you how much–in addition to the Zephyr.
You’re lucky that you got to see it. When I took the Amtrak train through Bond, the train was extremely late, and it was well after dark. In fact, I was sound asleep in my coach seat. I was told later that the track was rough at that particular point, but it didn’t wake me up.
Imagine that…I was at Bond–Grande Bond–and was shaken, not stirred.
Running for cover,
Man, if 007 finds out, you’re probably toast! Isn’t a pun the lowest form of humor, or is it the limerick?
Art
Bond, Colorado, was a station created in 1934 with the completion of the Dotsero Cutoff between Dotsero and Orestod, Colorado. (Dotsero comes from “Dot Zero” on a survey that long predated the construction of the Cutoff.) The Dotsero Cutoff connected the Denver & Salt Lake Railway (the “Moffat Road” main line with the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad main line, reducing the route-miles between Denver and Salt Lake City for the D&RGW by 176 miles. The D&RGW had purchased control of the D&SL previously and merged it in 1947.
At Orestod, just east of Bond (literally around the corner), the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific (the D&SL’s predecessor) left the banks of the Colorado River that it had followed since Granby, and began ascending to Toponas Divide where it left the Colorado River drainage and entered the Yampa River drainage. This was both so it could achieve its intended air-line route between Denver and Salt Lake City and to access the substantial Yampa Coal Field, which the DNW&P main line traced from Oak Creek to Craig and beyond. At this point the railroad, previously descending on a water-level grade, began climbing on a 2.0% grade to Toponas Summit. When the Cutoff was constructed, Orestod was a convenient location between Denver and the major terminal at Grand Junction for a crew change, the running time being approximately equal on each segment and well within a 16-hour day. However, the river bank at Orestod was narrow so the crew change was constructed just west of Orestod at Bond, where the canyon broadened significantly. At this location a small runthrough yard, engine house, coal, water, and sand facilities, and crew hotel and restaurant were constructed, along with housing for section gangs, signal maintainers, and enginehouse employees. The location was named “Bond” because it tied together the D&SL and D&RGW. The connection to the original Moffat Road main line remained at Orestod; t
It’s supposedly the pun, Art. But this was so much more than an ordinary pun–the set-up had to be worked out, too.
Besides, you only live twice!
Thanks, RWM, for the detailed explanation, without which I probably would have gone through life thinking Bond and Orestod were one and the same. But what about the fact that Dotsero is Orestod spelled backwards? (Or is it the other way around?)
Carl – Orestod indeed is Dotsero spelled backward. Interestingly, the station was named Orestod for a good 30 years before the Dotsero Cutoff was built to connect the two points.
RWM
An often forgotten player in the Dotsero cut off was the Chicago Burlington & Quincy. They worked behind the scenes and used political pressures to help make the cut off happen. They may have even put some money directly into its construction. They wanted the traffic on the front range to shift from Pueblo to Denver. They figured that shift would move traffic currently flowing out of the mountains onto the Missouri Pacific north to Denver and hence onto them.
IF Moffat Tunnel had not happened in the 20’s, the cutoff would never have happened and the survey would have stayed in the can. RWM, I don’t remember hearing about CB&Q in Oz’s version of things, more the shorter route into Roper and SLC.???
J-P-Woodruff…thank Horace Sumner and Ridgway for his wild ride to Chicago and back during the 1904-05 “Gore Canyon War” for the 1883 Colorado Railway GLO filing map (which is where the CB&Q interest played the part and makes UP’s current ownership ironic)
CB&Q indeed had interest in D&RGW having a more competitive through route with UP for SP’s Northern California traffic, but there was no direct investment in the construction of the Cutoff, which was paid for with a loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. CB&Q had no interest in buying stock in D&RGW, either, as it was in bankruptcy, and D&RGW stockholders were wiped out in the reorganization.
CB&Q testified in favor of the RFC loan for the Cutoff but that is public record, not behind the scenes.
Mud is correct, as the cutoff would not have happened had not the Moffat Tunnel been invested.
Interesting how the public paid up much of the money to build the D&RGW into a viable railroad, by bankrolling the Cutoff and the Tunnel. (The loans were repaid with interest.) Some would classify this as socialism or unreasonable intrusion of the government into the private sector. The private sector had no interest in making these investments. The net value to the economy is probably on the order of a thousand times or more the investment made by the public, even if not a penny of the principal and interest had been paid for by the users (railroad shippers), which it was.
RWM