Pueblo, Colorado
The Denver & New Orleans Railroad was incorporated in Colorado in 1881 to run between its namesake cities but it only got as far as Pueblo, Colorado. It was later bought by the Colorado & Southern and most of it was eventually abandoned in favor of running rights over the D&RGW and Santa Fe front range lines. Most was taken up over time, but on Erie Ave., just east of the Fountain Creek in Pueblo, a short section remained to serve a beer distributor and a brick plant.
These two photos were taken in the March of 1989. I was in Pueblo preparing to move there from Maryland after transferring my job with the AAR Research & Test Dept. from Washington, D.C., to the Transportation Test Center. After work one afternoon I was in the city and noticed a short Santa Fe freight running caboose first by the Pueblo Depot. Pleased with the location and light, I snapped a shot on Kodachrome. Didn’t think anything more about it and went exploring. A little while later I noticed the same train running down the center of a street on the east side of town. Street running is unusual enough anywhere and I hadn’t expected to see any in Pueblo. I had my Pentax 6×7 camera loaded with black and white film and made three or four shots of the little train. To my surprise, the train stopped well before its destination and the engineer came out of the cab and invited me up to ride with him.
We trundled up to the beer warehouse and dropped off the two cars, picked up a couple of empties, and headed back to town. This turned out to be a great introduction to Bruce Barrett, Santa Fe engineer and railroad photographer. After settling in Colorado that summer, I joined him and a group of railroad enthusiasts for regular slide shows. Bruce went on to finish his degree and became an official with BNSF in Ft. Worth.
The going-away photo was published in a book by Jim Jones called the DENVER & NEW ORLEANS, In the Shadow of the Rockies, a very detailed history of this railroad published by Sundance Publications. The track in Erie Ave. was torn up in 1999, much to the delight of motorists, and that was the end of the D&NO trackage in Pueblo.
Peter Conlon – Photographs and text Copyright 2023
It was nice to see Bruce Barret’s name in your posting. I had the pleasure of working with him on a couple of projects at BNSF. He was my go to resource on anything that involved the joint Line. He was always very thorough in explaining things and as I said previously, always a pleasure to work with.
Thank you! Great short story about a day’s work on the railroad.
Great pictures and story history of past rail road history! Thanks for posting.
Great story about that type of railroading. I did this in New Haven Ct. and Bridgeport Ct. never looked at it as a big deal, to late now to take pictures as it’s gone.