Did the RR line the Georgetown Loop is on now once connect with Denver? I know it did not go up much higher into the mountains. The listing on Wikipedia is not highly detailed.
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
Colorado & Southern (originally Colorado Central.....W.A.H Loveland and Edward Berthoud's railroad ) via Golden to Denver......All that's left is pieces of the BNSF Golden Sub between Denver/Utah Junction and Golden that serves the Coors brewery et. al. that was built standard gauge between Golden and Denver and later dual gauged.
(Golden, Colorado's first Capital, was supposed to be bigger than Denver and was supposed to have all the smelters....but things changed and for a while the biggest city in Colorado was neither, it was Pueblo)
Mudchicken answered the question of whether the line went to Denver (it did). But that leaves the question of where the other end of the railroad was supposed to go. After all, why go to all the expense of building the Georgetown loop and bridge just to reach Silver Plume?
The answer is that the railroad was supposed to go to Leadville, which was, at the time, a major source of mining traffic. When the Georgetown Loop was built, the railroad (Colorado Central) was controlled by UP, and the CC was to be UP's access to Leadville. But, before that could be done, UP acquired the Denver & South Park, which already had a line to Leadville. As such, UP had no need for a second line, and construction on the CC was halted (at a point called "Gray" something or other, a little beyond Silver Plume). UP ultimately lost control of both the CC and the South Park line as a result of its 1890's bankruptcy
Ask Matt Bown, host of Extreme Trains on the History Channel. In the Episode Steam Train(about UP 844 taking a train from Denver to a rodeo in Cheyenne). It has a segment on the Georgetown loop.
(but the South Park line never got to where it was going either.....and the name was "Graymont" headed off towards Officer Gulch.)......on the other hand, you also had the Argentine Central/Argentine & Grays Peak/Georgetown & Grays Peak (1905-1918) tacked on to the end of that rascal for another 16+ miles to get up to 13,000 ft MSL...(nosebleed country)
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