Greetings, friends and enemies! (To Hell with the indifferent!) This week’s jaunt back through time takes us to the long-abandoned Argentine Central Railway. Despite the name, this railway was located not in Argentina, but in Colorado. It operated from 1906 to 1918, and is best remembered for hauling tourists to the summit of Mount McClellan – an altitude of 13,587 feet! The former railroad grade was converted to an automobile road at some point in time, and I drove up the thing during the late spring of 2013. The first thing I encountered (other than trees) was a very long tipple, which presumably fed silver ore into freight cars on the railway…
Decades after the silver mines and railway were abandoned, an attempt was made to widen and lengthen one of the mines to create a highway tunnel. This would have routed US Highway 6 under Loveland Pass, depriving people of the spectacular views they currently get by driving over it. Depending on which source you wanna believe, this happened in either the 1930’s or the 1950’s (or perhaps both). In either case, I found a buncha litter that appears to be from that time period…
After the 1930s/1950s litter field, I was returned to the earlier decades of the 20th century, as I spotted this de-wheeled ore cart and unsecured mine entrance…
The next site I encountered confused me at the time. We have the remains of a clearly old, stone building, but also modern steel barrels and large amounts of steel rail just layin’ around. I have since learned that the abandoned attempt at a rail/highway tunnel eventually saw a third attempt, this time as a water tunnel. This time the tunnel was completed; that was in 1969. So I assume the stone building dates to the railway tunnel era (1902 – 1911), while the steel drums and rails were brought here in the late 1960s. Here are a few shots of all that mess…
From this point on up, I didn’t notice any historical stuff worth photographing. It’s all scenery from here…
And so ends our visit to the Argentine Central Railway. Come on back next Thursday for an exploration of the most scenic Interstate in the USA!
Voyages with Parkinson's 
Did you go into the unsecured mine entrance???
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I had left my canary at home, so no.
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