RE: [CBQ] Coal for Denver's Engines: CB&Q vs. C&S, Bituminous vs. Lignite

["Hol Wagner holpennywagner@msn.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>]

Jonathan:
 
You're precisely right.  The C&S never burned Leyden coal -- at least not in its locomotives -- but it was a popular heating coal in the Denver area and the Denver Tramway was hampered by reaching the heart of Denver through the city streets.  Residents, obviously, were not anxious to have coal trains running past their homes day and night.  The Tramway built to Leyden primarily to obtain coal for its big power plant on the northwest bank of the South Platte River, on the West Side Line of the C&S.  To appease residents the Tramway ran coal trains to the power plant only at night and sold coal commercially from a coal yard at W. 38th Ave. and Utica St. (just across 38th Ave. from the original home of Elitch's Gardens amusement park; the building that housed the facility still stands today).  But there was a larger market for the coal than the Tramway could serve from its northwest Denver coal yard, so within a year or two of the construction of the line to Leyden in 1902-03 the branch was three-railed west from Leyden Junction (where it left the right-of-way of the new Moffat Road (David Moffat's Denver, Northwestern & Pacific), so standard gauge cars could reach the mines.  At that time Moffat and Gov. John Evan's son, William G. Evans, owned the Tramway).  This still didn't provide sufficient outlet for the coal so in 1913 the Leyden branch was three-railed all the way into Arvada from Leyden Junction, and a connection was built to the C&S Clear Creek District tracks there, allowing the coal to move on into Denver over the C&S tracks.  The C&S served a large number of wholesale and retail coal dealers whose yards were in the Platte Valley along the C&S (and also, incidentally, the passenger tracks of the Moffat Road) between 15th and 19th streets behind Denver Union Depot.  This allowed the C&S to deliver Leyden coal to a number of Denver retailers, and the arrangement remained in effect until the streetcar system, including the line to the Leyden mines, was abandoned in June 1950.
 
More than you wanted or needed to know, probably, but those are the facts of the arrangement.
 
Hol  
 

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To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
From: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:09:58 -0800
Subject: RE: [CBQ] Coal for Denver's Engines: CB&Q vs. C&S, Bituminous vs. Lignite

 

That is interesting, Harold. Thank you. Do you model any narrow gauge traction — either the 42" Denver Tramway or the 3' Deadwood Central? It might be fun to do the 42" in S scale using HO gauge track. I did not know much about the 42" gauge tram line, especially its role as a coal hauler. If the Leyden coal was sub-bituminous (not sure it was, but you speculated it might have been softer than the C&S's other sources) and in light of Hol's statement that the C&S preferred harder coal for its engine fuel, which it got from the southern Colorado fields around Trinidad, I wonder if their acquisition of trackage rights to the Leyden mines might have been primarily to tap that coal for freight traffic.  

Jonathan

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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>

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