LOVELAND, Colo. — The Great Western Railway’s Loveland depot, built in 1902, will be preserved following a short move from railroad to city property on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.
The Loveland Historical Society began working with Great Western owner OmniTRAX in 2012 to preserve the building, and eventually accumulated the funds necessary to move the two structures that make up the depot some 50 feet, KUSA-TV reports. OmniTRAX plans to use the station site for other purposes.
Mammoth Moving & Rigging performed the move.
That Loveland depot reminds me very much of the old look-a-like SPRR Deming, NM redwood depot that UPRR wanted out of the way for the double track project back in 2004. I was put in charge of having the aerial phone cable safely cut down across the mainline tracks from our MW foreign exchange radio facility to the old depot location. Prior to that, the Deming Depot had off-premise exts. (OPX) dial phone service via our analog MW system, from both the Tucson and El Paso PBX phone exchanges, with direct inward dial, (DiD) and D-outward-D (DOID) capability to the outside cities. Today, MoW people there have VoIP phones.
Anyway, in that situation, the rigger contractor had to use an industrial size power “skill” saw to cut the large (lookalike Loveland) depot in half in order to transport it in two trips to it’s new location about a mile away along the abandoned WWll Deming industrial spur, where a lot of the track still exists along the golf course, filled with asphalt between the rails for a sidewalk. (That NC-SC Saluda Grade railtrail ought to consider that for national security). Then the rigger had to attach the two halves back together again for the new depot restoration.
Perhaps some of the News Wire forum members might have seen the video doc. on the Discovery Channel, where two guys from the U.K. filmed the operation, and yours truly had to shout out safety orders to make sure there were no train movements, in order to safely cut down that aerial phone cable.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/26708491580
Very cool. Thank you for sharing.