Nostalgia & History > Ghosts of the Colmor Cutoff

I guess this counts as a Depot-and-other-stuff-Friday contribution.

Every so often, the subject of this Santa Fe main line coulda-been comes up on here -

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1957020
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1927968

A good article on the history of the Colmor Cutoff is here:

http://www.atsfrr.com/resources/burton/Colmor.htm

This "yet another way around Raton" piece of railroad not surprisingly roughly followed the Santa Fe Trail's "other way around Raton," the so-called Cimarron Cutoff. Starting from Dodge City and heading southwestward, the railroad built to Elkhart, KS in 1913, extended the line through Boise City to Felt, OK in 1925, and reached Farley, NM in 1931 before construction ground to a halt during the Great Depression. The final 35 miles to the main line at Colmor, NM were never completed, and the track from Boise City to Farley was lifted in 1942.

I followed the abandoned section from Boise City to the C&S connection at Clayton, NM in 1995, but never explored the bit from Mt. Dora to Farley until this month. I had heard rumors of surviving railroad structures, and was keen to see what remained. Quite a bit remains, as it turns out, and the arid terrain coupled with grading and filling worthy of a main line make the roadbed easy to spot for most of the way.

1. Looking west toward the former end-of-track from the NM-193 crossing in Farley.

2. Looking east at the same spot toward the Farley depot's former site. The concrete footings on the left appear to be from a Horton-style water tank, which Santa Fe employed on this line as well as the north-south route through Boise City. A surviving Horton still stands on the latter route at Campo, CO: http://atsf.railfan.net/tanks/wtcampo1.jpg

Farley didn't exist until the railroad arrived, as demonstrated by Santa Fe construction photos in Santa Fe Depots - the Western Lines and Coach Cabbage and Caboose that show the depot and railroad structures and precious little else. A small community eventually grew up around the station. Today there is still an unincorporated town at Farley, but just barely. The main street, NM-193, is lined for a block of two by long-vacant commercial buildings. A deserted school stands nearby, along with a few ruined dwellings, and some in better shape that appeared to still be occupied.

3. Even in 1931, Santa Fe depots lacked indoor facilities, and the "depot closet" was a standard fixture at the far end of the platform. Very few of these once essential structures survive, but the standard closet that presumably once served the Farley depot still stands. Relocated along the main drag, it apparently serves one of the town's remaining residents.

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4. Just east of Farley was the turning wye. It's easily discernable in aerial photos, but I've always had trouble making abandoned grades show up clearly in photos. In this view, the main line grade is in the foreground, and one leg of the wye can be seen curving off to the south on the left side of the photo. The other leg on the right side of the photo is harder to pick out.

5. A view looking back along the main line grade toward Farley, in the trees in the distance. The traces of dark ballast make the grade show up better than most.

6. The Farley depot, a Santa Fe standard #3 for branch lines with an extended freight room, serves today as a storage building on a ranch east of Farley and south of the abandoned grade. Better kept than most depots that end up in ranch storage, the structure's roof and windows have been replaced since its days on the Santa Fe. The owners were good enough to repaint the building in the color scheme it would have worn when Santa Fe retired it - Colonial Yellow with Bronze Green trim and a red roof.

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7. Near the present site of the Farley depot, the abandoned grade crossed Ute Creek. Similar remains of a good many small piling trestles can still be found all along the line. The road to the left follows the grade more or less all the way to Mt. Dora.

8. There are also many of these - concrete culvert portals with the date 1931 cast into them. From the looks of it, Santa Fe dug a hole in the fill and salvaged the corrugated culvert pipe, leaving only the portals behind.

9. Sofia is the only other "town" west of Mt. Dora. If Wikipedia is to be believed, it was a small but established agricultural community for several decades before the railroad arrived. It was mostly settled by Bulgarian immigrants, hence the name. The place still isn't much, but did seem a bit neater and livelier than Farley. Sofia's Santa Fe depot consisted of two carbodies connected end to end. I found no sign of it, but a greatly modified Santa Fe section house and brick bunkhouse were still in evidence.

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10. The overpass at Mt. Dora near the C&S junction is still very much in evidence. The dirt road paralleling the Colmor Cutoff improves dramatically in the last few miles approaching Mt. Dora, probably owing to a quarrying operation west of town.

11. The Colmor Cutoff used C&S trackage rights between Mt. Dora and Clayton. The C&S Clayton depot has been gone since the 80's at least, but Santa Fe's depot survives as a house on its original site along Santa Fe Drive. This is the "town" side - the tracks used to run on the other side of the structure. The depot design was repeated at a few other stations in the middle part of the system including Cimarron, CO, Spearville, KS, and Reading, KS.

12. Across the border in Oklahoma, the only railroad structure I've found at Felt was this more or less standard bunkhouse. This photo dates from 1995, but it looks much the same today.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/09 22:15 by Evan_Werkema.

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Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ....I followed the abandoned section from Boise City
> to the C&S connection at Clayton, NM in 1995, but
> never explored the bit from Mt. Dora to Farley
> until this month......

Love this. Did you post any photos or a write up on the Boise City to Clayton section you explored earlier?

Jeff

Good stuff. I love railroad archaeology. Interesting "what if". Thanks for posting. Dan Tracy

There is also an old right of way running east out of Raton NM. It has been many years since I looked at it and I can't remember where it went. Do you know?

Evan-

You outdid yourself on this one, my friend! An EXCELLENT synopsis and your photography is simply exquisite. Wish I could have tagged along. I almost fell out of my chair with your shot of the Depot at Farley; I figured there'd be only a foundation and sagebrush. Did you encounter any difficulties with ranch owners?

Thanks a BILLION for sharing this treatise on the Santa Fe's Colmor Cutoff.

(Had the Belen Cutoff not been completed first, I think they may have come back to complete this for freight traffic.)

Take Care,

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

atsffan Wrote:
> tomstp Wrote:

> > There is also an old right of way running east
> > out of Raton NM. It has been many years since I
> > looked at it and I can't remember where it went.
>
> The line east of Raton was the Santa Fe, Raton,
> and Eastern; it ran out east to Yankee, NM. It
> later became part of the Rocky Mountain and Santa
> Fe which was an AT&SF subsidiary. The old RoW
> parallels NM Hwy 72.

The SFR&E also had plans to build east to Des Moines, NM. They graded south from Carisbrooke and along what is now US-64/87 to the St. Louis Rocky Mountain & Pacific line, shadowing it the rest of the way to Des Moines. The grade still shows up in aerial photos, but apparently it never had track laid on it. Considering the bustling metropolis Des Moines is today, it's hard to imagine three railroads trying to serve it.

ATSF100WEST wrote:

> I almost fell out of my chair with your shot of the Depot at Farley; I figured
> there'd be only a foundation and sagebrush. Did you encounter any difficulties
> with ranch owners?

Driving east from Farley, I didn't encounter a single gate on the road. There were lots of cattleguards, though, and plenty of cows munching on the sparse vegetation. Finding the depot was a pleasant surprise for me, too. Pounds' book suggested it was out there, but I hadn't come across any further confirmation. The owner wasn't home, but his hired hand was friendly enough, and let me take my photos.

Evan, let me add my "Wow! Is this great?!" to everyone else's. As has been said, I too love railroad archeology, and given what's out there today, it might even be the most interesting element of railfanning today for me. I returned from Colorado to California in 1988, but every so often, I think about, not the mountains, but out in the plains, the land of infinite sky - and abandoned rights of way. Looking back, I wish I'd have done far more exploring east from Denver than west, into that empty land in the heart of America.

Great series of posts, and so well explained. Thank you.

Lee Hower
Sacramento



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/09 20:46 by mcfflyer.

Evan, let me just say that I'm thankful that at least one of us
takes this stuff seriously, as I've said before your collection
of pix and data blows me away! Keep up the great work.

 Very well done.I enjoyed the narrative together with the pics.Bill Webb

It's nice to see people are still following this thread and the line.  I took the time to follow the line from Boise City to end of track last summer, so much is still visible. 

Thanks,I had forgotten this post Evan.