Colorado Midland Railway
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standard gauge |
The Colorado Midland Railway (
History
For a short time the railroad was consolidated with the Aspen Short Line (1893-1897). Following the Panic of 1893, the Santa Fe railroad failed and both it and the Colorado Midland went into receivership. During this time, a crash in the price of silver also led to economic decline in the mining towns served by the railway.
After the company was sold through the bankruptcy court on May 4, 1897, a new company known as the Colorado Midland Railway took over operation of the railroad. It then came under the joint control of the
Much of the line’s grade was incorporated into the modern day U.S. Route 24 in Colorado, in particular the section from Colorado Springs to Buena Vista.
Topography and operations
The Midland (as it was colloquially known) was an extraordinarily difficult railroad to operate, in large part because it had very little level track. In crossing Colorado, the line made three summits – at
The portion of the line from Leadville to Hagerman Pass provided the setting for some of the finest railroad imagery ever taken. Especially noteworthy was the work of W. H. Jackson, particularly the photos circa 1890 showing the rise over five levels and the massive wood trestle leading to the final tier.
Even after the boring of the Busk-Ivanhoe Tunnel, much of this trackage was above nine thousand feet, in a district of Colorado where the snow often does not melt entirely until June. The railroad was difficult to operate at the best of times, and in winter it was often nearly impossible: the 1899 blizzard closed the line over Hagerman Pass for 77 days and cost the company more than $73,000 (approx $2 million in 2013).
As great a problem as topography was, the route and terminals posed a still greater one. The line was originally projected to connect
Ironically, the situation reversed itself abruptly after the government took control of the railroads, and the USRA decided to route all trans-Colorado traffic onto the Midland. The railroad suddenly found itself handling a swelling volume of interchange traffic at Colorado Springs and Grand Junction. The line had neither the motive power nor the physical facilities to deal with this sudden change, and yards and even on-line sidings rapidly filled with cars waiting movement to one of the terminals. After an investigation, the government reversed its decision, redirecting through traffic to neighboring lines that were more capable of handling it; this was a wise decision, but the business generated by the road's on-line customers was not sufficient to keep it profitable without through traffic, and Carleton was compelled to seek permission from a court to abandon service in the summer of 1918.
Equipment
At the time of its construction, the Midland was among the best-appointed roads in the United States. Ten of the locomotives it purchased in 1886 and 1887 (the Class 115 2-8-0s) were among the largest and most powerful of their type in the United States. Unfortunately, the Midland's cash situation militated against capital replacement, and most of the locomotives purchased in the road's first decade were still on the property when it closed in 1918. The Midland purchased its last locomotives, the Class 175 2-8-0s, in 1907; after that, the purchase of new power fell behind ordinary operations and maintenance expenses on the company's priority list, and was postponed in part because of concerns about the ability of the roadbed and track to support heavier equipment. At the outbreak of the First World War, the road's chief mechanical officer proposed the immediate construction of a new class of engines to handle the surging traffic, but the state of the road's physical plant (which urgently needed both maintenance and upgrading) was such that he limited his proposal to a copy of the D&RGW's C-48 class locomotives, a design that was thirteen years old and approaching obsolescence.
Numbers | Class | Builder | SN | Type | Built |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1-3 | Class 115 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2225-2227 | 2-8-0 | 1886 |
4-10 | Class 115 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2228-2234 | 2-8-0 | 1887 |
11-13 | Class 102 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2235-2236,2417 | 4-6-0 | 1887 |
14-22 | Class 104 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2418,2239-2246 | 4-6-0 | 1887 |
23-25 | Class 93 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2309-2311 | 4-6-0 | 1887 |
26-28 | Class 102 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2419-2421 | 4-6-0 | 1888 |
29-38 | Class 102 | Baldwin Locomotive Works | 9206,9209,9208,9210,9215,9217,9298,9300,9302 | 4-6-0 | 1888 |
39-44 | Class 102 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2925-2930 | 4-6-0 | 1889 |
45-48 | Class 102 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 3261-3264 | 4-6-0 | 1890 |
49-53 | Class 136 | Baldwin Locomotive Works | 15130-15134 | 2-8-0 | 1897 |
100-102 | Class 91 | Schenectady Locomotive Works | 2309-2311 | 0-6-0 | 1887 |
201-205 | Class 159 | Baldwin Locomotive Works | 18631-18632,18646=18648 | 2-8-0 | 1897 |
301-306 | Class 175 | Baldwin Locomotive Works | 32124-32127,32151-32152 | 2-8-0 | 1907 |
References
- ^ Railway Equipment and Publication Company, The Official Railway Equipment Register, June 1917, p. 786
- Abbott, Dan, & Ronzio, Richard A. (1989). Colorado Midland Railway: Daylight through the divide. Denver, CO: Sundance Books. ISBN 0-913582-45-X