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[quote user="MP173"]<p>Interesting situation for the Rio Grande. I am taking a look at their financials in the 70's and they were a very profitable carrier. </p><p>[/quote]</p><p>Calling the Rio Grande very profitable is actually an understatement. When purchased by Anschutz Industries the D&RGW owned most of its locomotives and freight car fleet outright -- no leases (how many other railroads can you say <em>that </em>about in the 1970s?); a large new office building occupying an entire block in downtown Denver's financial district, of which D&RGW occupied maybe 10% and leased the rest to bankers and lawyers; substantial industrial land; and had about $400 million in cash in the bank. Anschutz bought the property for less than its ready cash assets, which shows how wrong the free market can be, at least in the short term.</p><p>[quote] </p><p>It appears they had a couple of advantages...on one hand they were a bridge carrier, receiving traffic from the western carriers such as WP or SP and then handing off to other carriers at Denver or Pueblo. Is that a correct assessment? If so, they were essentially a "division" of the haul without considerable costs for pickup or delivery.</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>I hope you don't take this wrong, but you have it completely backward, and for that I blame Lucius Beebe for his mythology and romanticism, and Robert Athearn for his partisan agenda of western regionalism and the Rocky Mountain West's inferiority complex post WWII. Neither author wanted to report reality how it was but only how they wished it would be -- Beebe wanted to live in the past and Athearn wanted Eastern respect. Unfortunately what they wrote stuck like glue probably because it conformed so perfectly to railfans' internal biases, and everything David P. Morgan and his successors wrote to the contrary continues to be ignored! </p><p>The D&RGW was enriched by its local traffic, not its bridge traffic. Interchange wasn't all that heavy and on an average day amounted to one train with WP at Salt Lake City, two with SP at Ogden, one or two with the Q at Denver, one or two with RI at Denver, two with MoPac at Pueblo, and in total maybe two trains worth with UP and Santa Fe combined (not including coal). Very little of this traffic bridged across the D&RGW because its route was quite inferior in service to UP and Santa Fe, if one was looking at a California-Kansas City or California-Chicago routing. Most of the interchange business either terminated or originated on Rio Grande. The only notable through business was Ford autos and autoparts which Rio Grande had half, UP the other half. That amounted to about 180 trains a year, which usually had to be filled out to tonnage with other freight. </p><p>Where Rio Grande did very well was on business terminating and originating in Denver and Salt Lake City in competition with UP and Santa Fe, because its local service was vastly better thatn the big roads. Thus a shipper originating a carload in California for a Denver destination would usually specify a SP-D&RGW routing rather than SP-UP, because UP would lose so much time switching the car in Cheyenne to a Denver train, and waste more time in Denver. It was not uncommon for a car of lumber to arrive in Denver on the 134 in the early morning, get switched to the Short Local for Hugh M. Woods in Arvada, get set out by 0800, unloaded, the empty picked up by the local coming back that afternoon, get switched into a 187 that night, and be out of Denver in less than 24 hours. </p><p>Where the Rio Grande made the money in the 70s was on-line industry: U.S. Steel Geneva Works, Kennecott Copper Utah Copper Div., ASARCO Magna Smelter, U.S. Smelting & Refining Midvale Smelter, CF&I Steel Minnequa Works, Conoco and an independent refiner in Denver, four refineries between North Salt Lake and Woods Cross; Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe; and about two dozen coal mines. Geneva was Rio Grande's largest shipper and good for about 250 cars a day in and out. Some of this traffic was quite unknown and quite heavy: Conoco generated about 60 cars a day, every day, for Grand Junction -- a business that dated to 1914.</p><p>[quote] </p><p>On the other hand, they appeared to originate some coal traffic, usually profitable traffic. </p><p>[/quote]</p><p>Some?!! The D&RGW was a coal road -- born that way, built that way, ran that way, still is that way. The bridge traffic was froth. Even today with the spectacular ascension in UP's empire of the Powder River Basin, former Rio Grande lines in Utah and Colorado continue to generate 24-26% of UP's total coal train loadings, about 350 trains/month vs. 1,000 trains/month for the PRB.</p><p>If you want to see what coal did for D&RGW finances, compare the annual reports from 1950 to 1980. Coal declined badly in the 1950s, reaching a nadir in the early 1960s, then began a steady rise through to 1980 -- note what it did to revenue and profitability. There was always a heavy and steady coal movement for Geneva Works, Minnequa Works, and Kaiser Steel-Fontana Works, but the steam coal business took off spectacularly beginning in the early 1960s.</p><p>Circa 1984, there was a pie chart at SP headquarters in Denver showing that coal originations on D&RGW accounted for 15% of the revenue and 75% of the profit of the SP system. </p><p>[quote] </p><p>How much traffic did they lose as a result of Staggers?</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>All of the overhead business. Staggers, as everyone knew, meant that the Rio Grande would be reverting to a coal-originating branch line. Which it did. It took awhile for mergers to sort it out but there was no question in anyone's mind of the end game, which was the closure to through traffic of the Rio Grande. The RI gateway dried up in 1980, the WP gateway in 1982, the Q gateway in 1986, and the Santa Fe and UP business wasn't that great anyway, except for coal. That left the D&RGW with its virtual railroad to Kansas City, which it gained as a condition of the UP-MP-WP merger in 1982, and the SP connection at Ogden. SP transferred its severely declining Overland Route business to D&RGW in 1982. Most of it went to St. Louis because the Rock Island in Kansas City was nothing but an island, and some of it went to Chicago, especially after SP purchased the Spizzle (the SPCSL, former Alton). (Recall that SP acquired Rock Island in Kansas City when it purchased Rock Island's half of the Golden State Route to become the Cotton Rock.) Santa Fe, BN, and UP were not good connections in Kansas City (or anywhere else for that matter) because it usually meant they would be short-hauling themselves. If they even would quote a rate it would be unfavorable. </p><p>[quote] </p><p>What is their current status as a part of the UP? </p><p>[/quote] </p><p>The Rio Grande originates and terminates local business, though not at the scale it once did given the loss of Geneva, Minnequa, Midvale, and Fontana. The big business is coal -- those 350 trains a month. </p><p>[quote]</p><p> Was Tennessee Pass closed mainly due to the lack of interchange to the Mopac in Pueblo, or due to the nasty grades?</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>I think you're thinking that the business is the <em>interchange </em>when in fact the business is the <em>destination. </em>An "interchange" is nothing but a device to extend oneself to a destination, and the destination was Kansas City and east, there being very, very little business other than grain origination between Pueblo and Kansas City. About 99.9% of that grain went east and south, so for all practical purposes Pueblo-Kansas City was a traffic desert for the Rio Grande. </p><p>There was NO interchange to MoPac in Pueblo after 1982. Zero! The Rio Grande extended itself to Kansas City over the MoPac where it interchanged mostly with Milwaukee Road/Soo, and some with BN. Tennessee Pass was closed because it had high operating costs and the UP did not need it then or now. All Tennessee Pass gets you is a capacity relief route for the Moffat Tunnel for North Fork coal destined beyond Denver east or south, which UP hasn't needed yet and probably never will, and a capacity relief for the Overland Route through Wyoming, which UP hasn't needed yet and probably never will. </p>S. Hadid
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