Rail company eyeing Eagle County service no longer involved in Utah oil train proposal

An oil train travels behind paddle boarders on the Colorado River near Dotsero in August.

The Texas-based railroad company that holds a passenger-service lease with Union Pacific on the Tennessee Pass Line through Eagle County is no longer involved with the controversial Uinta Basin oil train proposal in Utah … and hasn’t been since last year.

Despite still being listed as a partner on the Uinta Basin Railway website, Rio Grande Pacific Corporation (RGPC), out of Fort Worth, Texas, is no longer the railroad company of record for the proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin oil-train project, an RGPC spokesperson told RealVail.com via email on Tuesday.

“Rio Grande Pacific is no longer involved in the Uinta Basin project,” an RGPC spokesperson confirmed. “This change occurred in 2023.”

The Uinta Basin Railway project’s approval by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board – the chief federal regulatory agency overseeing the nation’s rail networks – was the target of an Eagle County lawsuit that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 10.

Eagle County and five conservation groups successfully opposed the surge in oil-train traffic along the Colorado Riverthat would result from connecting the Uinta Basin to the nation’s main rail network, but the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition in Utah petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, relying on a narrow interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

RGPC’s withdrawal from the oil-train project is noteworthy because the Texas company, which remains interested in providing passenger service on the line between Gypsum and the Royal Gorge – running along the Eagle and Arkansas rivers – has long sought to distance itself from the return of hazardous freight on the UP-owned line, which has been out of service since 1997.

RGPC still holds a lease deal it inked with Union Pacific in 2021, although the STB rejected a request for expedited approval of the lease because of potential opposition along the line and the need for more scrutiny. Before that happened in 2021, RGPC had sought to amend the lease to “restrict … the transportation of crude oil, coal and hazardous commodities” on the line.

Last month, with the formation of the Western Rail Coalition (WRC) that RGPC is not a part of, an RGPC spokesperson confirmed its interest in reviving the original passenger-rail lease if there’s enough local support:

“Rio Grande Pacific remains interested in coordinating with communities along the Tennessee Pass rail line to determine whether there is interest in developing commuter/passenger rail. Additionally, RGPC is open to the potential of other local, non-hazmat freight that originates or terminates within the corridor between Eagle County Airport and Parkdale in Fremont County. We believe the existing rail line could play a role in state and local passenger rail goals, as well as broader community and economic development plans, workforce housing access and commuter needs, climate action goals, and more within this transportation corridor that links world class recreation and resorts, higher education institutions, airports and communities.”

The Western Rail Coalition, a group of passenger rail advocates with six local backers in Eagle and Garfield counties, sent a letter to the administration of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and the head of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) seeking the study of a potential passenger line from Glenwood Springs to Leadville using diesel multiple unit (DMU) trains that are 75% quieter and less polluting than traditional diesel locomotives.

According to the Rio Grande Pacific Corporation (RGPC) website, the company “is a privately held, Fort Worth, Texas-based holding company for regional freight railroads. Through various subsidiaries, RGPC provides complementary services, including signal construction and design, passenger operations, equipment remanufacturing and dispatching services, to short line railroads and transit agencies across the United States.”

RGPC formed a company called Colorado Midland Pacific to pursue the Tennessee Pass Line lease deal with UP, which has a long history with RGPC. Its first short line railroad was acquired from UP in 1990.

The Tennessee Pass Line (TPL) will require extensive refurbishing if it is to be revived. It has been dormant, or out of service and never officially abandoned, since the merger of UP and former TPL-owner Southern Pacific in 1996. If UP was to file to abandon the line now, it would be opening itself up to an Offer of Financial Assistance (OFA) from a competing railroad company that could result in UP losing the line.

Rail experts say the 3% grade on the western side of Tennessee Pass down into Minturn makes it highly unlikely any railroad company would want to try to transport oil or other hazardous materials over the line these days given that capacity is available on the active Moffat Subdivision that already carries oil trains from Utah along the Colorado River through Grand Junction, Dotsero and Bond in Eagle County, then through the Moffat Tunnel at Winter Park and down into Denver. Trains from there can then travel south toward Gulf Coast refineries.

Peter Rickershauser is a retired rail executive in Denver who worked for Southern Pacific and briefly for Union Pacific before being recruited away to competing Class 1 freight carrier Burlington Northern Santa Fe to head up network development. His first job at BNSF, which he continued until leaving the company in 2010, was implementation of the UP/SP merger settlement agreements. BNSF was brought in by the STB as the competition in the UP/SP merger.

“Let’s talk about the physical characteristics of Tennessee Pass Line because this is something that makes me laugh when I hear people being concerned about oil trains,” Rickershauser said in a recent phone interview, explaining the active Moffat Subdivision has an average 2% grade on both sides of the tunnel, while the TPL up to the pass at Ski Cooper averages 3%.

“Railroading, I like to say, is a game of physics. The shortest, straightest, flattest route wins,” Rickershauser said. “So given their druthers, as long as there’s capacity through the Moffat, they’re going to go that way. The last thing you would want to drag up Tennessee Pass is an oil train, or a coal train, because of the grade.”

Two-mile-long oil trains, with heated tanker cars to accommodate Uinta Basin’s waxy crude that can’t travel through pipelines, would require numerous locomotives burning a lot of fuel on the TPL – plus there’s added safety factor that makes the route prohibitive, Rickershauser said. 

Lastly, as a Colorado resident, he thinks the state needs to keep its transit options open, especially with an existing rail line that could connect to the Eagle County Regional Airport.

“Everybody needs to think long-term and everybody needs to think about preserving and enhancing mobility,” Rickershauser said. “And before somebody yanks up one of these rail lines, they need to make sure that they will never regret having done that. Whether the technology exists right now or not, these corridors, once they’re gone, are irreplaceable.”

Rickershauser points to Aspen as a case study for what happens when a rail line is converted to a recreational trail and now transportation officials and local residents are struggling to deal with increasing car and truck traffic on U.S. Highway 82. In the 1990s there was a rails to trails plan drawn up for the TPL that never came to fruition.

Western Rail Coalition map of proposed passenger rail in Colorado.

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