Como, Colorado on Boreas Pass Railroad Day

Dang, would have liked to have made that!  Was only by there a couple of times over a decade ago, or more, and only saw an apparently inaccessible roundhouse ruin in what looked like a fenced field, and did not try to go into town.  Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette has had an article saying there was restoration going on.  The South Park and the Colorado Midland, one narrow and one standard,  were the snowfighter roads of hard knocks in Colorado railroad and mining history.

  Great pictures John !

Thank you!

That's amazing to see this old facility being restored. Here it is on satellite imagery:

Como roundhouse

The turntable measures out as 50 feet diameter on the imagery.

On Boreas Pass about 8 miles to the north-west from Como, you can see an old C&S boxcar by the road in Google street view. Also some building ruins there visible in satellite view. The present trails maybe outline the former turning wye?

Boreas Pass

ACE,

Driving the old grade, over Boreas Pass, between Como and Breckenridge, is a lot of fun.  It is kept safe for normal cars to drive.  The scenery is terrific.

John Meixel posted:

ACE,

Driving the old grade, over Boreas Pass, between Como and Breckenridge, is a lot of fun.  It is kept safe for normal cars to drive.  The scenery is terrific.

I would really like to explore that some day, along with Alpine Tunnel and Hagerman Pass and Rollins Pass and Tennessee Pass and other notable Colorado railroad routes.

A friend took these pics at Alpine Tunnel area years ago, same DSP&P route further west from Como and Boreas Pass.

Unfortunately you can't get to the Alpine Tunnel now.  A few months ago a portion of the Palisades collapsed.  There is hope to rebuild it though.

John - Thank you for the pictures. Como, in the South Park days, was a division point. Presume the hotel was there for people making connections to points on the lines radiating to Leadville and Gunnison, plus a number of branch lines.  The last passenger train - to Leadville - was April 9, 1937. The rails began being taken up about a year later. So great to see restoration progressing of such an historically significant site.

Como was a true railroad town - most of the residents drew either directly or indirectly from the South Park payroll. It was big enough to even support a murder.......the wife of a South Park engineer was implicated !

I only got part of the way up on a drive up to Alpine Pass, and ran out of time late in the day some years ago.  I hope your tag, "Nobody goes there anymore", does not soon apply.  I remember a water tower on the east side of the road part of the way up, but little else.  My brother and I drove up to a collapsed tunnel above the east mouth of the Moffat Tunnel on the old Colorado Midland, also some years ago, but I do not now know what tunnel that was.  We got out and walked in it and through it, but there was fallen rock and no room to get his IH Scout through it.

I drove from Como to Leadville via Breckenridge over Boreas Pass in 1957 when I was stationed at Ft Carson. Somewhere in my files I have a photo of the water tank, but unfortunately haven't scanned it yet.  I logged thousands of miles in my new 1957 chevrolet and made it to Hagerman tunnel, Alpine Pass, and the Silverton Branch among other destinations.

Lew Schneider

colorado hirailer posted:

... My brother and I drove up to a collapsed tunnel above the east mouth of the Moffat Tunnel on the old Colorado Midland, also some years ago, but I do not now know what tunnel that was ...

That would have been the old Denver & Salt Lake line over Rollins Pass, not CM, and possibly Needle's Eye Tunnel?

The Colorado Midland used the Busk-Ivanhoe tunnel at Hagerman Pass straight west of Leadville.  After the CM was abandoned the tunnel was renamed the Carlton Tunnel and was used as a rather primitive toll road. The CM ceased operations through the Busk tunnel in 1917.

Lew Schneider