WASHINGTON – The Surface Transportation Board has rejected real estate moguls’ effort to force Union Pacific to sell its mothballed Tennessee Pass line in Colorado.But the board’s ruling leaves open the possibility that KCVN and Colorado Pacific, which proposed buying the Tennessee Pass line and restoring it to service to haul agricultural and mining commodities, could apply again.
KCVN and Colorado Pacific sought to force a sale of the 228-mile route under a feeder line application. [see “Union Pacific opposes firm’s plan to revive Tennessee Pass route,” Trains News Wire, March 3, 2020.] The application was rejected as incomplete.
The STB said that KCVN and Colorado Pacific didn’t show that shippers requested service over the line or that UP has failed to serve shippers on the route, most of which has been out of service since 1997. They also failed to show that potential shippers sought service on the line, regulators wrote.
The decision denied as moot UP’s opposition to the feeder line application, as well as shortline operator Rock & Rail’s motion to partially reject KCVN and Colorado Pacific’s effort to operate the line. Rock & Rail provides service on the line in the Pueblo, Colo., area.
KCVN and Colorado Pacific in 2018 successfully used a feeder line application to gain control of the 121.9-mile Towner Line in Eastern Colorado. Last year Colorado Pacific spent $3.5 million to restore the line to 25-mph operation and next month plans to resume regular service.
A sale of the Tennessee Pass line to Colorado Pacific would create a nearly 400-mile route extending from Towner, Colo., to Dotsero, Colo., that would provide grain and mining shippers with a shortcut to Utah and the West Coast, KCVN says in its filing.
Colorado Pacific would spend $278 million to bring the Tennessee Pass route back to Federal Railroad Administration Class 2 track standards that would permit 25-mph operation.
KCVN is controlled by New York real estate developer Sheldon Solow and his son, Stefan Soloviev, who reverted to the traditional spelling of the family’s name.
Soloviev, who controls Colorado Pacific, has extensive land holdings in the West totaling more than 350,000 acres, including cropland in Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico. His companies, which operate under the name Crossroads Agriculture, own grain elevators in eastern Colorado and western Kansas.
Oil hit $20 a barrel yesterday (Wednesday – 3/18). I don’t see near-term demand for a new energy-based rail corridor in light of this price development. With a national recession imminent, if we aren’t in one already, will also temper demand for mine products. On-going trade disputes with China have also knocked down grain exports, so the business case for new rail operation on the ex-Rio Grande Tennessee Pass line appears to be marginal, at best.
An early April fools joke. At this point in time, we need all the humor we can get.
Colorado Pacific should be hired by the CA HSR Authority to advise on how to build a low cost HSR line!
Apparently, Colorado Pacific has developed a full-scale version of the old Lionel “Magna-traction” to allow 250 mph running over Tennessee Pass. Trackside photographers should keep a wide berth.
Those decimal points get you every time.
Would spend 278 million to bring the line back to Federal Railroad Administration Class 2 track standards that would permit 250–mph operation ??????? I hope this Is this an oops.
“Colorado Pacific would spend $278 million to bring the Tennessee Pass route back to Federal Railroad Administration Class 2 track standards that would permit 250-mph operation.”
Finally: High Speed Rail in the U.S.
Wow… 250mph through the Colorado mountains. They do have big dreams.
250 mph track?
With oil at less than $30 a barrel and the market being flooded by Saudi Arabia and the Russians….Whoever thinks they have the capital or the banks lined up to finance Uinta Railways to get oil on this line is having one big dream.
Alberta just signed a big deal with CN to get tar sand oil from the province down to the US petro coast. And now you think you can get a substandard oil (waxy Utah shale) down to the same coast where refining capacity is already at the limit?
It would probably be cheaper to simply refine that candle wax gook right there than spend millions to send it somewhere else. Which raises another question, most midrange refiners don’t want it. That is why Alberta has to send it somewhere else.
It would be great if the line reopened to whoever gets it. Get photo ops. Multiple units dragging a freight up serious grades. More Power!!!!
Thank goodness TRAINS fixed the typo. There were about a half dozen people getting close to needing intervention.
Daryl Achenbach, it was leaked last week in the UP response that they were negotiating with Rio Grande Pacific, so only time will tell.
WOW only a federal agency couldn’t determine that the UP hasn’t provided service to shippers over a line that has been closed for 23 years. Since the UP has been in “serious” negotiations with someone about this line I wonder how long it will be before a sale is announced.
This proposed sale always seemed to me like a way to get a lot of real estate at a discount.
Someone at Trains is paying attention to the comments they have fixed the typo and it says 25-mph now at 4:30 EDT.