There are many stories about the completion of the Raton Pass route and the competition between the Rio Grande and the Santa Fe to secure the route that BNSF would gladly rip out today (if they could ensure no competitor would propose taking over the line… [*-)]. My question - with the 3% grades and other operational difficulties, I don’t fully understand why either of the two roads didn’t just swing a few dozen miles to the east and build “around” the Sangre De Christo Range and save all the elevation changes.
Full disclosure - I’ve never been to the eastern CO/NM border area - the net up-and-down may have been just as expensive given the extra mileage involved.
(1) Ever heard of the Cimarron Cut-Off (1912-1942)?
(2) Santa Fe Rocky Mountain & Eastern (Swastika Route)?
(3) Dawson Railway?
The “other way around” was a railroad to nowhere, to no water, to no marketable minerals and to NO people except the occasional wandering Indian. Multiple surveys* were made and filed - nothing was built. Plus the Puratoire/Picketwire canyons were nasty (still are), as was Capulin/ Cimarron country…
ATSF, Kansas Pacific, CB&Q, CRIP (via Liberal and also Dodge City), and others.
Friend and college MC has already responded with incite and I shall offer this:
When Santa fe was at Granada, (now the station of Barton) following completion and securing the Land Grant through Kansas they did indeed survey (reconisance) the route you suggest. It was indeed lower and shorter than the Raton Pass line which Santa Fe eventually built. But there was at that time no source of - revenue, water for steam engines and timber for ties and bridges.
Santa Fe’s competition was building into Colorado where all of these things were available, but most importantly the revenue from the mining that was prevalent in large quantatives at that time; and certainly needed for a newly established RR.
Later Santa Fe did look to build the ‘Colmor Cutoff’ from Dodge City, KS to the location ‘Colmor’ located some 40 miles south of Raton. They did indeed build part of it but what is now the TRANSCON LINE east from Belen was already established with lesser grades and a much shorter connection to the Texas revenue which was established and growing.
In retrospect we now see the wisdom of those decisions with th Raton Pass line not needed for the present and foreseeable traffic.
The gradients that I’ve seen listed consistently show it as 3.5%. Ouch! No wonder that BNSF does not use Raton Pass!
Years ago, in the heyday of the passenger train, AT&SF could zip up Raton with little effort. But, that zipping doesn’t happen with today’s long, sometimes heavy freights.
Need I say more?
Here in Southern California, surveyor Fred Perris staked out a line circa 1880 from San Diego, through the now famous Cajon Pass, to Barstow. I guess for expediency, he utilized a few 3% sections. Interestingly, today BNSF in Cajon Pass does not normally allow heavy downward trains to utilize the 3% line, only the 2.2% line. In light of Raton’s 3.5% grade, it is little wonder BNSF does NOT traverse the line.
[:-,] Well heck, let’s get the track crew from the Blazing Saddles movie to build us a line from Raton Pass to Tennessee Pass via Alamosa, so’s we can just run trains up the one and down the other . . . [ducks to avoid objects thrown by mudchicken and diningcar . . . [swg] ).
FW&D and the EP&SW (Dawson railway) blocked any diversion to the East.
There do appear to be a pair of canyons to the west that could be part of a new route with a summit of similar height if desired, at around 36°56’33.70"N, 104°44’40.78"W. Clearly, though, there is no demand for such a line and the EP&SW could probably be rebuilt for less.
ATSF Colmor Cutoff (what was built of it) utilized trackage rights on the FW&D (IIRC between Clayton and Mt Dora.) I’m not sure how you mean that the Dawson line would have blocked any diversion to th east. I think the final obstacle to the cutoff was the Canadian River Canyon.
The C&S Long Canyon branch went around west of the pass you geo-referenced. D&RG also graded up to a pass to the west of Raton and east of your reference.
I found one of the grades slightly west of the marker, but could not find one to the east. I selected that point as it is the closest the canyons get and would require the least amount of grades.
Methinks you have a trip to Farley, NM in your future. Just getting there will double the size of the town. (Plenty of buildings you could move into[C):-)])…Hope you have enough gas to get back to civilization[swg].
One of the problems from Farley to Colmor was very “loose” ground and driving bridge piling to bearing was difficult or impossible. The loess & ash out there was really poor stuff to build embankment with.
(1) the warped 3.5% myth is getting pushed again (Baloney, unless you are talking about some kind of skewed average…)
(2) as late as the 1990’s, there were proposals floated to put The Dawson Railway back in and bypass Glorietta Hill. (The Dawson RR also had its flaws … fun in Mountain Country)
(3) The connections at Mt. Dora and Clayton are still very visible.
(4) The BNSF (C&S/FW&D) Twin Mountain Sub from Trinidad to Texline also has some nightmare properties that may kill it off in the future.
Try building it in the winter with the snow blowing sideways and coating everything in ice. Think we can nominate from the forum who gets to be Headley Lamar, the Governor and Taggart.
Was this mainly for the York Canyon coal trains so that they could avoid Glorietta Pass? How would the route connect from Tucumcari to the rest of the ATSF?
Not really -think (1) ATSF Northern Route alternate transcon and (2) a connection at Vaughn for a better pacific NW to Texas alternative to BN in the Shouldn’t Paint So Fast era.
Everybody forgets about the EB challenge on Glorietta w/ heavy freight, such is the obsession w/ Raton. Passenger trains is one thing - freight is quite another.
M-Mike, The Tucumcari SP-UP line crosses the Santa Fe-BNSF at Vaughn, NM and a connection could have been constructed, but as MC points out the suits just see lines on a map and believe it will work When they are shown the costs and the negative operational features they pretend they did not have the idea.