Steam & Excursion > Descending Cumbres

This spot has given the railroad trouble for years.  Even in the 60's, this section of track began slipping.  Does someone here know the full history?

Ed

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Yes.... the straight story....

The track was solid there until the highway was widened and paved in 1970.  That upset the natural drainage on the hill.  Water that came down the hill used to run across the road and on down the hill, under the track and on toward Wolf Creek in the bottom of the valley.  With the new highway, the water hit the road and soaked in.  The hill is made of clay soil.  The water then surfaced just below the track.  One spring, the ground and roadbed gave way under the track leaving about 150' hanging.  We came up with a work train and dumped about 6 cars of rock in the hole.

The next day the rock was 20 feet down the hill.  Water was oozing out of the rock, oak brush was being pushed out of the ground by the water.  We decided to to shoofly the track over against the hill where the ground was more stable.  In the above pic, to the left of the 4th car is a sizable rock outcrop.  The rock extends under the track.  We tried to shoot the rock (as in blow it up) to smooth out the grade but, it wasn't going anywhere, so we simply laid the track on top of the rock and accepted the bit of hump and cross level it created.

Since then the NM highway dept has done a lot of drainage work on the road, as annually large hunks of it would cave in at spring run-off time.  They finally got it under control and the ground stopped moving downhill from the shoofly'd track.  When they finally ballasted the C&TS main many years later, it looks like they pulled the rail back toward it's original alignment but not quite all the way as that little right hander coming down the hill wasn't there originally.

All this happened in the spring of 1982, the first year Kyle Railways assumed operation of the C&TS.  This was the first thing they got to fix (with their own money), hence its name "Kyle's Kink".

Thank you.  I appreciate the complete and detailed info.  I have been looking at that spot since the early Sixties, each time I came back, it looked a little different.

Ed