RE: [CBQ] Re: C&S branch lines in southeast Colorado and northern New Mexico

[HOL WAGNER <holpennywagner@msn.com>]

C&S depots of the early 20th Century as a rule  were painted either a light tan (depot buff) with darker brown trim or a light gray with dark green trim. There were numerous exceptions.  The depots at coal mine towns such as Berwind were largely freight offices, with an agent who received the daily car orders from the mines and passed them along.  The agent also sold tickets to passengers who would catch the train at the nearest mainline town.  All the coal mine switching in both the Trinidad and Walsenburg districts wasth the C&S doing the actual switching for the Trinidad District and the D&RG for the Walsenburg District.  Thus both railroads had equal access to all the mines, with a very few exceptions.  In 1904 Hastings became a Colorado & Southeastern town when the C&S sold the trackage from Ludlow to Hastings to the newly formed C&SE, which was a subsidiary of the Victor Fuel Company (founded by Gen. Grenville Dodge and still partly owned by the general, who by this time was C&S board chairman).  The C&SE built east from Ludlow to a connection with the D&RG at Barnes and also had trackage rights over the C&S south to Trinidad, where they interchanged with the Santa Fe.  The C&S two-stall enginehouse at Hastings was soon moved to Ludlow.  The mines at Hastings and Delagua were Victor Fuel properties, and there were a number of portals or adits, including at least one high up the mountainside that required an aerial tramway to bring the coal down to the tipple.  I can't tell you what the large building with multiple stacks is for, but bear in mind that about half the mines in the Trinidad District (but not the adjacent Walsenburg District) produced coking coal, and much of this coal was washed before being transformed in the on-site coke ovens.  Hastings, as shown in one of my present day views, had a large bank of coke ovens.
 
As noted in another post, Cokedale, west of Trinidad on Highway 12, is the best (only?) preserved company town and has two large banks of coke ovens still standing.  A visit to Cokedale alone is worth the 200-mile drive down from Denver.
 
A majority of the southern Colorado mines were owned by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., and those not served by the C&S, D&RG or Santa Fe were served by CF&I's own Colorado & Wyoming Railway.  An excellent book on the C&W, covering many of the coal mines and mining towns, is Bill McKenzie's Mountain to Mill: The Colorado & Wyoming Railway, out of print but readily found at www.bookfinder.com.
 
 
Hol

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To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
From: jonathanharris@earthlink.net
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:55:13 +0000
Subject: [CBQ] Re: C&S branch lines in southeast Colorado and northern New Mexico

 

"Poor quality" in terms of image resolution, maybe, but not in terms of historical information. Thank you again!

Pretty desolate places, these company coal towns — reminds me a bit of images from the Burlington Bulletin article on the Cambria branch.

The C&S depot at Berwin is light with dark trim; not sure about the one at Hastings (image looking NE) — is it the building with the pagoda overhang closer to the viewer, or the darker one further down the line, closer to the mouth of the canyon? And in the other Hastings photo (looking North), what is the huge building with all the stacks? And why did they need an aerial tramway?

Jonathan

--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, HOL WAGNER <holpennywagner@...> wrote:
>
>
> Here are a few poor quality images showing how some of the mines at Berwind and Hastings, Colo., looked early in the 20th Century and how Hastings looks today. Plus a shot of the UMWA memorial at Ludlow. And just for grins, the charcoal ovens at Catskill, N.M., abandoned since the 1890s and virtually inaccessible today, but listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
>
> I'll send the present day images separately, as Yahoo won't accept the message if I send them all at once.
>
> Hol
>

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