Wagon Wheel Gap Route

and the

Denver & Rio Grande Railway

The San Luis Valley Southern

Railway Company

The railroad that came and went with no one noticing...

Connecting to the main line on the west side of Blanca ( about 15 miles east of Alamosa on Hwy 160 ) this line ran south through the best crop areas in the San Luis Valley and was to connect to Taos, NM but never completed.  It carried produce that fed the plates of every one from the rich Mine Owners of Denver and down to the poor miners in the high mountains.

A surprising amount of this line, equipment and buildings still sits outside Blanca, half buried track, falling apart buildings, and the most ugly train power ever patched together.  Worth the hour it takes to see it all when you pass through Blanca.

Historic Photos

1925 Motorcar M-300 that carried freight an local passengers, a little strange looking but fully functional...

M-300 parked in Blanca Yards - see additional present condition photos at end of section...

Yard engine built on a short flat and driven by a truck axle and tires, typical of SLVS equipment.

Current Photos

Hidden below the blowing sand and dirt roads are the last rails of the SLVS.

Still connected to the main line but unused for years these old rails are slowly fading from sight but hopefully not from memory

.

Not unlike an abandoned old western town of the movies, these old loading docks are slowly decaying away.

Additional loading and maintenance buildings sit just off the dirt road about 1/2 mile south west of Blanca, Co.

An old loading facility still stands proud against the Mountain Peaks looming over it...

Leaving for today to chase trains I will return to get additional close up photos of the equipment left behind at the SLVS...

Hidden away in the back storage area of the Oklahoma Railroad Museum is what is left of M-300, exactly how it found it's way there is unknown, but it does survive and awaiting someone to return it to original condition...

Looking fine in the 1940's, it is just a sad reminder of what was...

Note later changes in front with extended nose just below front cab windows, looks like for air compressors for brakes, catcher removed with two front steps and also no truck drive axle on old photo. We know it is the same unit for it is still labeled M-300...

Typical to SLVS - Drive is a truck axle with rubber tire...

Although Cab is almost gone, the frame and axles survive, this would be a great start on rebuild...

We wish to thank Guy Lynn  of the Oklahoma Rail Road Museum for these photos of M-300

The following information on the M-300 was sent by Guy Lynn - it is interesting reading..

Dear Richard,

One last follow up after looking at the photos and your commentary on the SLVS M-300

You might want to locate a book called Colorado's Loneliest Railroad, The San Luis Southern by P. R. "Bob" Griswold.  My copy was published by Pruitt Publishing Company of Boulder, Colorado and copyrighted in 1980.  This book has photos of the M-300 in all of its various guises including the last time it was used (albeit as a ballast car).

The car had the truck axle added for "traction" sometime in the 1950s..  The initial location was between the front and rear truck just ahead of the lead axle of the rear truck.  The car still looked the same as your photos as late as Sept. 1949.  A photo in the book shows the extended front end was added by 1960.  I suspect this extension was added to accommodate an air compressor to operate the train brakes on the cars as there are brackets and piping still in place that indicate a compressor was once located there.  The M-300 is very light and freight cars loaded or unloaded would not have any problem pushing it down the track once they got to rolling. 

The SLVS experimented with the rubber wheel drive system when the steel wheels (on the rear truck) proved to provide inadequate traction.  The rail bus was used to replace a mail/passenger train. The problem with the rubber tire system was the tires heated up on the rail to the point they last only a couple of round trips of the line.  The same problem occurred with the first D-500 that was built with rubber wheels.  Replacing a blown tire on that thing would be downright exhausting, particularly at high altitude.  It seems that both the M-300 and the first D-500 were quite adept at blowing tires

The M-300 also had a steel trailer car of narrow gage dimensions (standard gage axles however) that was used infrequently and finally finished its days as the pump house for the SLVS water well.

One bit of information that exists on the M-300 today is the name of the builder.  The car was built by Winter-Weiss of Denver, CO.  According to the book it was delivered in 1924 or 1925 as car M-3 along with it's trailer M-4.  I have only seen one photo of the M-300 towing its trailer.

As for how the car came to Oklahoma City.  One of the traveling members of the Oklahoma Railway Museum (then called the Central Oklahoma Railfan Club, also called the Central Oklahoma Chapter of the NRHS) happened onto the SLVS at Blanca about 1985.  He caught sight of the M-300 and asked the railroad if they would part with it.  About 6 months later the M-300 was loaded on the back of a flat bed semi-trailer and trucked back to Oklahoma.  The car earned the name "The Mouse" because of its silver/gray paint and the fact that a whole troop of mice could be seen falling out of the M-300 and  running all over the deck of the trailer as it was towed over La Veta Pass.

From your photos I guess I can assume that there is no longer any rail activity on the SLVS at Blanca.  When I picked up the M-300 the second D-500 was still being used to switch cars at Mizokami Brothers Produce.

The photos on your web page turned out great.  Thanks for posting them.

Yours,
Guy Lynn
Norman, Oklahoma
USA  

Remember most of what you see is on private property, please respect that...

Take only Photos and Leave only Footprints..... Thanks....

Oklahoma Railroad Museum - At Oklahoma City - Interesting and extensive collection - Open Saturdays for Free...

Has in it's collection the SLVS M-300 Motor Car -

http://www.oklahomarailwaymuseum.org

Web Site E-Mail Address is Wagon-Wheel-Gap@hotmail.com

Also see our History of San Luis Valley & it's Railroads web site:

Wagon-Wheel-Gap.freehomepage.com

It's still under construction but you may find it interesting.

This is not an official web site of the D&RG Ry. Historical Foundation. 

It is a private informational site by Richard Cutter who is solely responsible for content and

content is not submitted to, approved nor controlled by the D&RG Historical Foundation.

Unless otherwise Noted

Historical Photographs 1800's to 1940's from the National Archives

Photos, Videos and Text are Copyrighted by Richard Cutter

   - Photos can be used for non-commercial use if plainly identified as to copyright holder and location, such as "at Wagon-Wheel-Gap-Route, Colorado"

The name "Wagon Wheel Gap Route" refers to the section of the Creede Branch of the Old "Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad" that extends from South Fork to Creede Colorado, the name was developed and used for this website and is considered as our trademark.

Last updated: July 03, 2005

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