The Colorado Pacific Railroad is a

shortline railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

operating on 122 miles of former

Missouri Pacific Railroad The Missouri Pacific Railroad , commonly abbreviated as MoPac, was one of the first railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi River. MoPac was a Class I railroad growing from dozens of predecessors and mergers. In 1967, the railroad ...

trackage in southeast Colorado. It interchanges with

Union Pacific The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pac ...

and

BNSF BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

at North Avondale Junction near Boone, and with the

Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad The Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad is a shortline railroad operating in the Midwestern United States. It is primarily located in Kansas and extends into Colorado, but despite its name, not into Oklahoma. Overview The KO is a subsidiary of Watco, ...

at Towner. It is sometimes referred to as the Towner Line or the Towner Railway.

History

The line was constructed in the late 1880s by the Missouri Pacific Railroad as part of its mainline between Pueblo and Kansas City. As a condition of the 1982 Missouri Pacific - Union Pacific merger, the Denver & Rio Grande Western got trackage rights over this line. The D&RGW merged with the Southern Pacific in 1992. In 1996, Union Pacific Merged with Southern Pacific, and the line became redundant in UP's system. The Surface Transportation Board approved the abandonment as part of the merger. The

Colorado Department of Transportation The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT, pronounced See Dot) is the principal department of the Colorado state government that administers state government transportation responsibilities in the state of Colorado. CDOT is responsible f ...

purchased the line from UP in 1998 for $10.2 million in hopes of finding a short-line operator to serve farmers and others in small towns along the route. In 2000, CDOT leased the line to the Colorado, Kansas & Pacific Railway. In 2004, the lease was transferred to V&S Railway. V&S, intent on scrapping the line for immediate cash, put factors in place to make a railroad appear no longer viable. They made their freight rates uneconomical so that shippers were guaranteed to lose money.

Soloviev Group Ownership

Real estate magnate Stefan Soloviev's Crossroads Agriculture began operating in the area in 2007. Soloviev became interested in the railroad line, especially when learning about V&S's intention to abandon the line. He decided to purchase the line to facilitate grain transportation at lower costs. Upon discovering Soloviev's intentions, in 2014 V&S began preparing the line to be scrapped by removing tie spikes and anchors. However, they did not have legal authority from the STB to do this. Soloviev asked the STB to force the sale of the railroad as a feeder line. The sale took place in 2016. Over the following years, rehabilitation took place and railroad operations gradually resumed, with plans to expand service as new infrastructure is completed.

Rolling Stock

The railroad owns two EMD SD40s, painted blue and prominently displaying the Colorado Pacific logo.

References

External links

*https://solovievgroup.com/divisions/colorado-pacific-railroad Colorado railroads {{US-rail-company-stub