There’s nothing like a good-natured argument to improve on a fine day like last Thursday. It was warm for February and the wind wasn’t howling. Also, I had hustled my way aboard the San Luis Express. This inaugural run should have been called the “Media Freeloader Express” – the first passenger train from Alamosa since 1953.
Our train had two diesel locomotives and only one car, the Caritas. It is a 1948 Pullman sleeper that has been rebuilt into a private car with a lounge, kitchen, four compartments and a rear observation platform.
We were bound for the town of La Veta, 61.4 miles away on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo Range. Starting May 24, and until mid-October, there will be regular daily round-trip passenger trains between La Veta and Alamosa, and between Alamosa and Antonito, where passengers will be able to board the steam-powered narrow-gauge Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad and ride to Osier or Chama, N.M.
After some speeches and a ribbon-cutting, as well as a brass band playing “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix, our train rolled across the Rio Grande toward Fort Garland and Blanca. I got comfortable on a couch in a Pullman suite. I was soon joined by Mike Rosso from the local newspaper, who had ridden down with me from Salida, and Virginia McConnell Simmons of Del Norte, our eminent regional historian.
Virginia had sorted out the business wheelings and dealings that had made all this possible. Start with the old Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, which connected Denver to the Rio Grande in 1878. Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz bought it in 1984 and merged it with the Southern Pacific in 1988. He came out about $3 billion ahead after selling to the Union Pacific in 1996.
The UP then sold pieces of the system. The 21 miles from South Fork (actually, a siding known as Derrick) to Creede went to the Denver & Rio Grande Historical Foundation, while the rest of the D&RG tracks west of Walsenburg were sold to RailAmerica, a short-line operator. Last December, RailAmerica sold the tracks to another short-line operator, Permian Basin Railways. Permian continues freight service in the San Luis Valley to Antonito and Monte Vista. The trains bring in farm chemicals; they haul out potatoes, barley and rocks.
Permian formed the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad for the San Luis Valley lines, and it will operate the passenger trains with the Historical Foundation. After we got the corporate stuff more or less figured out, the train passed Fort Garland and began climbing the pass.
Just which pass, though, is what led to some lively discussion in the parlor. The way I learned the story, the D&RG built a narrow-gauge line over 9,386- foot La Veta Pass in 1877-78. In 1899, the railroad abandoned that route and built a standard-gauge line over a nearby crossing at 9,249 feet that had been known as Wagon Creek Pass, and this was christened Veta Pass.
(To add to the complication, what is now U.S. 160 used to cross the pass on the old narrow-gauge roadbed, which can still be driven; in 1974 it was re-routed to 9,413-foot North La Veta Pass.)
But there are knowledgeable people who insist that the narrow-gauge crossing was Veta Pass and that we were crossing La Veta Pass en route to the town of La Veta, where hundreds of enthusiastic people turned out to greet the train.
On the way back, as I stood on the platform while we crested the pass at Fir (the railroad name for milepost 207.2) with a tight horseshoe curve ahead and stunning scenery all around, the discussion turned to railroad altitude records. This was the highest through crossing now operating in the United States, we decided. It’s at 9,249 feet, and the apex of the Moffat Tunnel is only 9,239.
The Tennessee Pass tunnel reaches 10,242, but that through line is currently out of service. The Manitou & Pikes Peak climbs past 14,000 feet, but it’s a cog railroad and not a through line, so it doesn’t count here. The Leadville, Colorado & Southern is a regular adhesion railroad; its summer excursions start at about 10,200 feet and climb to about 11,000, but it’s not a through route.
So we were on the highest through route in America. I was traveling like a millionaire (the Colinas costs $5,000 a day) through land owned by a billionaire, the Forbes Trinchera Ranch. I had enjoyed expansive views of otherwise inaccessible country. The weather and company were splendid. There are a lot of worse ways to spend a day, even if I’m still not positive about which pass we crossed.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
