The Yampa Valley Mail and a rambling Colorado Railroad story. Colorado once had scores of railroad companies but the two that survived the longest were the Denver & Salt Lake and the Denver & Rio Grande. Both focused on routes West of the Front Range.
The D&SL, aka the Moffat line, was the builder/owner of the Moffat Tunnel. As part of the bond financing, a property tax, the Moffat Tunnel Tax, was imposed on portions of Colorado along the original route. The D&SL made it from Denver to Craig, CO before running out of money.
The D&RG was the most successful railroad and did reach Salt Lake City. Many smaller railroads, including the D&SL, were acquired. The financial maneuvers involved probably wouldn’t withstand close scrutiny. When the D&RG got control of the Moffat Tunnel, they acquired the debts and obligations. One obligation was to provide daily passenger service from Denver to Craig. No service, no Moffat Tunnel Tax.
Passenger service was a money loser and the D&RG tried to get out. There were three trains, the D&RG portion of the California Zephyr (now operated by Amtrak, the Prospector, an overnight train to Salt Lake City, and the Yampa Valley Mail. The dastardly Western Slope residents wouldn’t let the D&RG out of the passenger train service unless the Moffat Tunnel Tax was rescinded. Hence, the Yampa Valley Mail continued. The train usually consisted of a ALCO PA1 locomotive with a unique square nose profile, a mail/baggage car, and one passenger car. The ALCOs could haul. Even with numerous stops, the train averaged 60 mph over a roadbed that was kept to freight, not passenger, standards. At some point the mail subsidy went away; then the tunnel bonds were paid off, and around 1968 the service stopped.
In Colorado, the railroads are responsible for fencing their right of ways and are liable for any livestock they kill. In the Yampa Valley area, annual snowfall can exceed 30 feet making for steep snow banks along side the tracks.
Along about March each year, a certain rancher would run out of “drinking money”. His solution was to kick one of his culls onto the track just before the mail train was due. The claim was always for his best prime breeder.
A sound business plan and proper marketing could have made the train profitable. Today, the Union Pacific owns the D&RG and has closed several of the routes. The Craig route has been built up to handle heavy coal traffic. The roadbed is in excellent condition,
The UP could probably build a profitable business running a train catering to skiers with a stop in Winter Park, Bond, and Steamboat Springs. From Bond, shuttle buses could easily serve Vail and Beaver Creek.
My father was a section foreman for the D&RG for ten years. We used the Yampa Valley Mail to visit Denver. Often we were the only passengers. Some of the route is nearly wilderness as no roads go into some of the canyons.
Hope some of you will enjoy this as a break from the current crap (TSA, Congress, the One, etc.).
9 comments:
Love it! Thank you!
I'll bet that WAS a ride! :-) 60 mph over 'passenger' grade is bad enough...LOL
Dear friends of our parents would get on the Yampa Valley Mail at Rollinsville (east side of the Moffat Tunnel) to see us in Steamboat. They knew all the train crews, so instead of getting off at the station in town, the train would stop at our driveway at the edge of town. The elder couple would get off (generally out of the caboose where the hot coffee was)and the train would continue on west. When the visit was over, our father would call the depot & the process was reversed. I'm sure that there were many tourists on the train who wondered who the elder couple was and how did they have that much "pull" for the special stop.
Sisty
NFO The train had to run at 80 mph in places to average 60 mph. I was young enough to accept that as normal. Also, I remember the D&RG had a few passenger cars built with a different (Better?) suspension. The winter weather played hell with the tracks in the best of circumstances. These cars were left over from the 1950's when passenger comfort still mattered.
Sisty
They were the NEAL'S, Gilpin County royalty! Of course they received preferential treatment.
But of course!!!! How shallow of me to refer to them as "merely" friends.
Sisty
Good point WSF! :-)
A small update. Most of the "chair" cars were rebuilt from orignal 1910 era coaches.
I rode the Mail alone between Rollinsville and Arvada many times. The conductor would take me from my Mom or George Leyen, who met the train twice a day to take the mail to the post office, and drop me off with Helen Lerch who would meet me in Arvada. The Lerch's had a cabin in Travis Gulch and often visited us. When I was 5 and 6 I would be given a hand full of change to purchase the ticket on board. The conductor would usually make me count my change several times and would explain how he would put me off the train if there was not enough money. There always was enough.
Little did I realize how cherished these memories would be.
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