Santa Fe's El Pasoan Line

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

  1. When did the Santa Fe first build its line south from Albuquerque, NM, to El Paso, TX, and

  2. its line east from Belen, NM, to Clovis, NM and thence to Amarillo and Lubbock, TX?

2

See "New Mexico’s Railroads, by David F. Myrick:

El Paso was reached by a branch line from Rincon, to wit: Original main line from Trinidad, Colo., crossed Raton Pass in 1878, reached Las Vegas, N.Mex., in 1879, Albuquerque in 1880, and Deming on March 8, 1881, joining the SP which had earlier built eastward from Los Angeles to El Paso and forming the SECOND transcontinental route – a route which was never used for significant volumes of transcontinental traffic, by the way.

The branch line from Rincon (on the Albuquerque-Deming main line) to El Paso, was completed on June 11, 1881.

The Belen Cut-off from Belen through Clovis to Texico to meet existing lines in the Santa Fe sphere of influence was constructed as the Eastern Railway Company of New Mexico in 1902-1908. With additional construction in the Texas Panhandle a low-grade freight route was ultimately formed between Emporia, Kansas, and Dalies, New Mexico, avoiding the 3.0% grades of Raton Pass and Glorieta Pass.

S. Hadid

3

This is truly a trivia question.

In December, 1963, the northbound El Pasoan derailed while enroute to Socorro. If at all possible, I would like to determine the exact date, place and cause of that derailment. What resources could I check?