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Rio Grande to the Pacific by Robert LeMassena SIGNED Limited Edition
Rio Grande to the Pacific by Robert A LeMassena includes detailed statement booklet Denver & Rio Grande Ry Co in back pocket
Hard Cover Private library tag inside front cover, Signed & Numbered 00258, special limited edition
416 pages
Copyright 1974 First edition
CONTENTS
Preface 5
Acknowledgements 8
Section One - Introduction - Historical Outlines 9
Section Two - Denver & Rio Grande Railway, 1870 - 1886 15
Section Three - Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, 1886 - 1908 51
Section Four - Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway, 1881 - 1889 83
Section Five - Rio Grande Western Railway, 1889 - 1908 89
Section Six - Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (Consolidated), 1908 - 1921 117
Section Seven - Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, 1921 - 1946 135
Section Eight - Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (Reorganized), 1947 - 1970 163
Section Nine - Rio Grande Southern Railroad, 1889 - 1953 205
Section Ten - Subsidiary Railroads 229
Section Eleven - Western Pacific 263
Section Twelve - Associated Railroads 279
Section Thirteen - Curiosity Salon 295
Section Fourteen - Corporate Control 305
Section Fifteen - Electrification 307
Section Sixteen - Rio Grande Territory - Including Maps and Profiles 315
Denver & Rio Grande Railway Time Table No. 13 385
Locomotive Dispositions 404
Bibliography 407
Index 408
PREFACE
The "Rio Grande" railroad has been the subject of a great many publications, and deservedly so. It was no small enterprise. Whole volumes have been written about its financial affairs, corporate activities, construction, locomotives, trains, cars, traffic and scenery. The primary focus of most of this literature has been the Colorado company and its extensive and justly famous network of narrow-gauge track in the Rocky Mountains.
By comparison, the Utah lines have been neglected. Their origins, involving several independent narrow-gauge railroads, can be traced back to 1873, only two years after the Denver & Rio Grande commenced operating trains in Colorado. Furthermore, these small Utah companies were formed into a completely independent railroad company which retained its identity until absorbed by consolidation in 1908.
Even less appreciated is the Western Pacific Railroad (between Salt Lake City and the Pacific Coast), which was planned, financed and built by the Denver & Rio Grande, and included in its "system" by various corporate arrangements until 1947.
Should anyone entertain doubt that the Rio Grande system did indeed extend from Denver to the Pacific Ocean, he need only examine the Denver & Rio Grande public timetable for December, 1908. On the centerfold map the Western Pacific railroad is shown completed between Salt Lake City and Shafter, Nevada; triweekly passenger service had been inaugurated during the previous month. On the western end, WP rails extended northeastward from Oakland, California, into the mountains. The gap was scheduled for completion in 1909, but the first passenger train did not run over the entire line until August, 1910.
Subsequent timetables carried "Denver & Rio Grande-Western Pacific" on their covers, and the system map indicated both railroads were integrated into a single system. Schedules showed Denver - Oakland service, with two trains each way daily, bearing identical numbers on each line. Through sleeping cars were handled between Oakland and Denver, as well as St. Louis and Chicago. The unique and colorful "Descriptive Time Tables" issued in 1915 for the Panama - Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, showed the two railroads united end-to-end, with a new train, the "Scenic Limited," running over their combined trackage.
By 1918 all that had changed. On the timetable route map the WP was indistinguishable from the Southern Pacific; it was only one more railroad in a long listing of through-car schedules. The D&RG had just been adroitly and completely looted of its tremendous investment and ownership in the WP, and the two lines were quite independent. Oddly, though, during the 1920's public timetables once again indicated that the WP and Denver & Rio Grande (Western) belonged to a common system, but the arrangement then was vastly different from the previous one. How the separation and reunion were accomplished is an intriguing episode in high finance.
Without its lines in Utah the original D&RG would have terminated in western Colorado, with survival wholly dependent on local traffic-truly a dubious prospect. Today the Utah lines are even more vital; branches originate enormous tonnages of coal and the main-line permits the railroad to operate as a high-speed bridge carrier across the Rocky Mountains. During the 1890's the Utah lines, which were then a rather independent corporation, came close to being divorced from the D&RG. How this trackage was acquired, rebuilt and finally merged into the Rio Grande system, heretofore treated only casually in other publications, now is delineated in detail.
Not only does this text include the most comprehensive account of the Western Pacific and Rio Grande Western railroad ever published, but it also presents material which has neither received mention in any previous history, nor even in the companies' annual reports. This concerns electrification-studies for which were commenced as early as 1906 and continued by either the railroad or outside organizations for five decades. Every imaginable reason was advanced for the electrification of certain trackage, the proposals ranging from the practical to the bizarre. An entire chapter is devoted to the several areas and schemes for electrification, none of which, (in the eyes of management) warranted the large expenditures which would have been required.
Unusual in the field of published railroad history is any detailed, coordinated examination of subsidiary companies; not infrequently they receive acknowledgment merely by name or are omitted entirely. The Rio Grande system embraced a great many such companies; 35 of them were of sufficient importance to be included here to show what they contributed to the final system. Some have been the subject of whole books, while others have not entered the public domain beyond recognition in ICC Valuation Reports. In addition, approximately 30 other railroad companies have been involved with the Rio Grande system in many different ways, ranging from disposition of a mile of track, to joint ownership and operation of an entire railroad facility. Mention of some of these companies can be found elsewhere, to be sure, but it is in this work that at last is incorporated a comprehensive exposition of their relationships.
This account of the Rio Grande system can be visualized in any of four different ways. It is a chronology of the development of the system's trackage-why it was built or bought, used, sold or abandoned. Motive power is traced in considerable detail, including the first complete compilation of RGW locomotives. The story of the railroad's activities can be read as one would read a novel, or the reader can discover how the system was assembled, company by company, each with its own peculiar contribution to the organization at the time.
However, to understand the system as it exists today, one must read the entire book. Again, it is no small enterprise.
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