 |
| Three BNSF freights in motion -- two west, one east. Photographer is standing atop Loma Alta west of the Pecos River in east-central New Mexico. |
Okay, you may be wondering how it is possible to catch three moving freights in one shot on the high plains of east-central New Mexico. Or not. Either way, here is how it works.
Immediately below is an aerial image of the location.
Loma Alta is a tiny granite protrusion eroding much more slowly than the surrounding high plains. A primitive road (passible by Jeep) leads to the top and an abandoned water tower.
From that vantage, the photographer saw a westbound train approaching in the foreground. In the right (east) of the aerial image above, you can see where the Transcon double-track splits, one line turning almost due west, the other hard to the southwest.
The train in the middle is running east, while the train behind it has taken the big dip to the south and is running west in back of the train in the foreground. The two westbounds are about four miles apart.
 |
| From the base of Loma Alta, the photographer catches two trains running west. The second train is about five miles away as the crow flies and about ten railroad miles. |
 |
| BNSF stacks beginning their trek west of the Pecos. |
 |
| One more in the parade of westbound stacks. |
It is unusual to start an article with a digression, but that's where we are. So let us return, or rather begin, with a discussion of our subject matter.
In a previous post (https://www.waltersrail.com/2024/12/union-pacific-in-west-texas-chihuahuan.html), we discussed the territory that Texans call "west of the Pecos." Since that river runs south out of the Sangre de Christo Mountains on the Colorado/New Mexico border, there is similar ground in New Mexico, though New Mexicans, less bombastic than Texans, have not given the place a name.
But west of the Pecos in New Mexico, semi-arid country rises and falls over extreme distances, as is befitting the southern arm of the High Plains. Too dry for farming without irrigation, just wet enough to sustain grass for cattle, the land is sparsely settled, windy and immense. When you stand on a hill, you can see as far as the curvature of the earth allows.
This country is different from Texas. To understand why, we must examine history.
 |
| A "meet" on the New Mexico High Plains west of the Pecos River. |
 |
| Eastbound across eastern New Mexico. |
On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk notified Congress that the United States was at war with Mexico "and notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, [war] exists by the act of Mexico herself."
A democrat, slave owner and protege of Andrew Jackson, Polk was a strong proponent of Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United States was "destined" to expand to the Pacific Ocean. Mexican territory of what became New Mexico, Arizona and California stood in the way of that expansion.
In late 1845, Polk sent John Slidell to Mexico City to purchase New Mexico and California (Arizona was a separate issue) for $30 million (over one billion in 2026 dollars). Mexican President José JoaquÃn de Herrera refused to receive Slidell. Herrera was then deposed in a coup by General Mariano Paredes, who pledged to invade Texas. Slidell then warned Polk that war was imminent.
Polk sent a military force to Texas under the command of General Zachary Taylor, which camped along the Rio Grande at what became Brownsville, immediately across the water from Matamoros. Mexican General Pedro de Ampudia demanded that Taylor return to the Nueces River, which Mexico claimed to be the proper border.
Taylor began a blockade. The Mexicans crossed the river, killed several Americans and took several others captives.
Responding to Polk's message, Congress then approved a resolution of war.
 |
| Three pushers help westbound grain climb out of the valley of the Pecos River. |
 |
| Westbound on the Belen Cut-off. |
 |
| Eastbound grain. |
In about 45 days, the "Army of the West" -- about 1,600 men under Colonel Stephen Kearny -- was mobilized at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and ordered to invade and in effect conquer New Mexico and California. The little army headed west on June 21, 1846.
Promoted to Brigadier General, Kearny grew ill during the march southwest, could not ride his horse and required transport in a supply wagon. He sent James Magoffin to Santa Fe with a proclamation for New Mexicans and a personal letter for Governor Armijo.
The proclamation said that Americans were coming with "great military force," and that people who remained peaceful in their houses "will be respected and protected in all their rights, both civil and religious." However, those opposing the United States "will be looked upon as enemies and treated accordingly."
The letter to Armijo advised the governor to "submit to fate . . . to avoid needless sufferings and miseries that may follow."
 |
| Eastbound approaching the Pecos. |
 |
| Westbound climbing on of the several grades west of the Pecos in New Mexico. |
 |
| Eastbound empty coal. A coal drag on the Transcon is almost always a bottleneck, as hotshot intermodals can line up behind it for miles. |
On August 8, 1846, Governor Armijo issued his own proclamation asking New Mexicans to defend their homeland. On August 10, he asked the Mexican government for $1,000 to support New Mexico's dragoons under the command of Colonel Diego Archuleta. The request was denied.
On August 12, Magoffin met with Archuleta and announced (untruthfully, as if turned out) that the USA claimed only the eastern half of New Mexico. The New Mexican Colonel, Magoffin said, could control the western half. To sweeten the deal, Magoffin gave Archuleta a substantial bribe.
On August 15, General Kearny spoke to a group of New Mexicans and stated:
We come amongst you as friends not enemies, as protectors, not conquerors . . . Not a pepper, not an onion shall be disturbed or taken by my troops. But listen. He who is found in arms against me, I will hang."
Armijo asked volunteers to assemble in the mountains east of Santa Fe, where the Americans would march on the capital, and where Colonel Archuleta and his troops announced that they would not fight. They departed with their armaments, so Armijo told the small band of assembled citizens to go home. He then rode south to avoid capture.
 |
| In New Mexico, rain in the land west of the Pecos decreases as you travel west. In Fort Sumner on the river, about 15 inches per year fall. Belen on the banks of the Rio Grande receives about ten. |
 |
| The only thing blocking your view is the curvature of the earth. (For you flat earthers, if the world were as you believe, the land above would continue to extend indefinitely, not terminate about 10 miles away. A six feet tall person at ground level can see about three miles.) |
 |
| Eastbound approaching Pecos River. |
The Americans entered Santa Fe like tourists, unopposed, and General Kearney announced that he was now governor and that New Mexicans were now citizens of the United States. On August 22, he issued a proclamation that all of New Mexico was now part of the United States and that anyone in opposition would be executed. Colonel Archuleta did not demur, though he did keep the bribe. Thus did the Army of the West take all of New Mexico without the firing of a single shot.
Shortly thereafter, Kearny produced a written penal code and appointed Charles Bent as the new governor. On a hill above Santa Fe, the United States established Fort Marcy, and Kearney and some of his soldiers departed.
By the fall, however, Governor Bent was complaining to the commander of the soldiers left behind, Colonel Doniphan, that his troops were abusing the local population, particularly women. Plus, Bent believed that Colonel Archuleta was planning a revolt. A few low level conspirators were arrested, but Archuleta and his compadres fled south to Mexico.
Believing that the uprising had not been fully quelled, Bent ordered the arrest of Manuel Antonio Chaves on the grounds of treason against the United States. A citizen of Mexico, Chaves had been fighting in the Mexican-American War but had not been involved in Archuleta's planned revolt.
Chaves was tried by an American military tribunal in Santa Fe and represented by American Captain Charles Agney, who argued that Chaves was a Mexican citizen fighting in the Mexican-American War and defending his home as a patriot. A non-citizen, Agney argued, could not commit treason against the United States. The military judges agreed and acquitted Chavez.
As of this writing, your author has been a practicing attorney for 47 years and has seen more than his share of miscarriages of justice. Still, stories like the acquittal of Manuel Antonio Chaves keep alive the flickering hope that one's life has not been wasted.
 |
| Westbound autos on the high plains of New Mexico. |
 |
| Westbound stacks. In the distance is the valley of the Pecos River and Fort Sumner. If you look really closely, you will see another westbound across the river. |
 |
| Westbound stacks passing an eastbound bare table. |
The story does not end on this happy note. On January 19, 1847, a mob broke into Bent's house in Taos and killed him, then went looking for and found other Americans to slaughter. The revolt soon spread to the small villages of Mora and Arroyo Hondo.
Less than a week later, the American Army arrived in Taos and killed over 150 rebels. Then the soldiers headed to Mora but in fierce combat were forced to retreat. The next day they returned with reinforcements and destroyed the town and everyone in it.
That summer, four Americans were killed in the village of Los Valles. The Army responded by shelling the village with cannon fire and then burning the rubble to the ground.
At Los Vallels, the rebellion ended.
But not the killing. Several rebels were later tried, convicted of treason and hanged, despite the earlier acquittal of Manuel Antonio Chaves. The military court claimed that, unlike Chaves, the rebels were not citizens of Mexico defending their homes but rather American citizens -- because of the proclamation of General Kearney.
The United States invaded a foreign country and claimed that all inhabitants were now American citizens. Then anyone who fought to defend his home was guilty of treason!
Perhaps one's life has been wasted after all.
 |
| Pusher on westbound grain. |
 |
| The BNSF Transcon west of the Pecos is part of the Belen Cut-off constructed in the early 20th century to avoid the bottleneck grades of Raton and Glorieta Passes. |
 |
| One of the many grades in eastern New Mexico. |
New Mexico had been taken and was now part of the United States, which set the stage for the great railroad boom of the last half of the 19th century.
In 1859 the Kansas legislature granted a charter to the Atchison and Topeka Railroad Company. Four years later, with no construction started, the company optimistically changed its name to Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Finally, in 1868, construction began in Topeka and headed west, away from Atchison, with rails reaching Dodge City in 1872. Four years later, the railroad extended to Pueblo, Colorado, while another Santa Fe line, building southwest from La Junta, Colorado, was completed to Trinidad in the summer of 1878.
Trinidad, Colorado, sits at the base of Raton Pass, an area of southern Colorado, northern New Mexico and far western Oklahoma repeatedly for hundreds of thousands of years covered with basalt from erupting volcanos. Basalt erodes far more slowly than the surrounding terrain, and so the land north of Trinidad rises steeply to the edge of a basalt cap over two thousand feet above the town.
The aerial image shows the relatively flat basalt flows that have eroded very little over the eons. To their west are the accordion ridges forming the edge of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. South out of Denver and Pueblo, Raton Pass was the only reasonable avenue of wagon and later rail travel.
To reach Santa Fe and ultimately the Pacific from Trinidad, the AT&SF would have to cross this pass. So would the Denver and Rio Grande, which desired to build a line from Denver all the way to Mexico City.
The Santa Fe, however, had carefully planned to be the first and only railroad across Raton Pass. Its 1878 Report to Stockholders stated:
It having been determined to extend the Pueblo and Arkansas Valley Railroad from La Junta to the boundary line of Colorado and New Mexico, to connect with a road to be constructed in a south-westerly direction by a company called the New Mexico and Southern Pacific Railroad Company, organized in our interest, the necessary preparations were made; and on the 26th of February 1878 we took possession of Raton Pass, the only practicable route for a railroad over the Raton Mountains and commenced the work of construction. Our possession was disputed for a time by the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company, but later that company retired from the contest, and work on the new line has steadily progressed.
The details of the Santa Fe's triumph are worthy of a B movie. Both Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande were building south to New Mexico, both had surveyed routes across Raton Pass, but neither had started construction. Unless the two railroads intended to build parallel tracks up one side and down the other, the first to start construction would gain a decided advantage.
The story goes that the Santa Fe tapped into telegraph lines and discovered that the D&RG planned to begin construction on a certain morning. The night before, two Santa Fe civil engineers -- A.A. Robinson and William Morely -- rode on horseback to the cabin of "Uncle Dick" Wooten who had previously graded a wagon road over the pass, established a crude hotel and charged tolls for passage. Several construction workers followed to join Louis Kingman (a Santa Fe surveyor and namesake of Kingman, Arizona) to begin dirt work near the top of the grade.
Lit only by hand-held lanterns, their bodies casting long, wrath-like shadows across the mountain, the men worked through the night. At dawn, Robinson and Morely rode back down the pass and discovered a Rio Grande grading crew preparing to commence construction.
Each railroad attempted to sabotage the other, cutting telegraph lines, halting supply wagons, removing recently laid ties and rails, even instigating bare knuckle fights to injure workers.
The smaller company with less financial clout, the D&RG soon began to run out of resources -- both money and men. After about a month, it retired from the field and left Raton Pass to its rival.
Soon thereafter, silver was discovered in Leadville, Colorado, and both railroads began another competition to lay track along the Arkansas River through the narrow Royal Gorge, the easiest path west from Pueblo. If you have not seen the gorge, its description sounds impossible. In places it is barely 30 feet wide and over 1000 feet deep. Constructing a single track railroad through the canyon would constitute a monumental engineering achievement, but there was room for only one track.
The railroads went to court, and in 1879 the D&RG was granted right of construction. Your author has been unable to find a copy of the decision but believes it was based on legal warrants previously issued by the federal government.
However, the financial condition of the D&RG made construction through the Royal Gorge problematic, so in one of life's many ironies, the railroad agreed to lease its rights to the Santa Fe for 30 years, and the latter railroad actually constructed the line through the canyon.
The D&RG did not give up. Instead, it began laying track on the western side of the Gorge to block the Santa Fe's passage to Leadville and beyond.
The Santa Fe hired about 70 local gunslingers, including Bat Masterson and Doc Holiday, who proceeded to storm and take control of all Rio Grande stations from Denver south to the eastern entrance to the Gorge.
The D&RG went back to court, claiming that the Santa Fe's actions constituted a breach of the Royal Gorge Lease. The court agreed and returned complete control of the canyon to the Rio Grande.
Every bit as determined as the Rio Grande, the Santa Fe filed suit in (of all places) Boston, Massachusetts. How, you may wonder, was jurisdiction proper in such a distant locale? Or not. Either way, here is you author's theory.
In 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a railroad which does not operate in a state but has agents in that state to solicit business cannot be sued in that state. Denver & Rio Grande Western R. Co. v. Terte, 284 U.S. 284 (1932). Prior to that decision, it seems likely that both the Santa Fe and Rio Grande employed agents in Massachusetts to solicit business, and the 19th century court felt that such activity gave it jurisdiction.
To settle the Massachusetts litigation, both railroads signed the "Treaty of Boston." D&RG took control of the line through the Royal Gorge and paid Santa Fe $1.8 million for construction costs.
Here is the biggest irony of all. Neither the BNSF (Santa Fe successor) nor the Union Pacific (Rio Grande successor) today runs trains through either Raton Pass or the Royal Gorge. Raton sees only two Amtrak trains per day, while the Gorge sees only occasional tourists runs. The line beyond the Gorge through Tennessee Pass has been abandoned for 29 years as of this writing (April 2026).
All in the name of progress.
 |
| Westbound. |
 |
| Westbound leaving Fort Sumner. |
Once Santa Fe had control of Raton Pass, it built switchbacks across the grade (later replaced by the first summit tunnel, itself replaced in 1908 by a second tunnel) and began laying track downgrade to Willow Springs (which later became Raton), then crossing the high plains east of the Sangre de Christos, reaching Las Vegas, New Mexico, on July 4, 1879.
Ahead lay Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in the contiguous states. Reaching it required construction up, down and across mesas of various heights and grades, including a three percent climb/descent on the west side of Glorieta Pass, as steep and treacherous as Raton, through the canyon of Galisteo Creek to Galisteo Junction, later renamed Lamy, where the tracks turned north and climbed another plateau to the capital.
Surrounded by mountains, canyons and impossible grades, Santa Fe marked the end of what became a branch line; the railroad continued the mainline west and south from Galisteo Junction through another narrow canyon to the valley of the Rio Grande, eventually reaching Albuquerque and then Deming, New Mexico, where the Santa Fe linked with the Southern Pacific to form the second transcontinental line across the West.
 |
| A "meet" above the Pecos. |
The Santa Fe ultimately acquired the western assets of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and completed a fully-owned transcontinental line from Albuquerque to the Pacific. Though Raton and Glorieta Passes were integral parts of that route, their three percent grades constituted major bottlenecks as all trains, both freight and passenger, required double-headed power to cross the summits. The obvious way to avoid this snafu was to construct a line that ran south of both the volcano fields and the Sangre de Christo Mountains.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Santa Fe had completed trackage across southwestern Kansas, northwestern Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle to Amarillo and on southwest to the New Mexico border. From that point, a new line could be constructed well south of the mountainous bottlenecks and west of the Pecos.
One additional hurdle remained -- the Manzano Mountains that rise east of the Rio Grande and Albuquerque and run south about 70 miles to their confluence with the Los Pinos mountains. The summit of that juncture is the small community of Mountainair, which appears to be sittiing at the base of the mountains, but actually rises about 500 feet above the already high plains to the east.
The Manzano Mountains are part of a fault that caused the earth to rise abruptly just east of the Rio Grande. The western edge of the mountains is thus a vertical incline sharply eroded over the eons. The eastern edge is a much more gradual incline -- like a wheelchair ramp. Mountainair sits at the top of that ramp.
 |
| Western edge of Manzano Mountains. |
The aerial image shows the juncture between the Manzano and Los Pinos Mountains and also shows the route that U.S. 60 follows down the side of the juncture toward the Rio Grande Valley. Near the western edge of the mountains is Abo Canyon, which the Santa Fe determined was the only practical route to reach the river -- about 45 miles south of Albuquerque.
In early 1902, Chief Santa Fe Engineer James Dunn ordered I.M. Jones to survey a route through Abo Canyon from Sabinal to Portales. Jones found Sabinal inappropriate and chose as his western terminus Belen, a few miles up the Rio Grande.
In March, Jones hired three surveying parties and placed over them men with eastern New Mexico experience. J. W. Stewart was to survey from Belen to the summit of Abo Pass. From there, S. A. Wallace was to lay out a route to the Pecos River. H. T. McGee was to survey from Portales west to the Pecos and east to the Texas boundary. Jones rode a horse-drawn wagon for a year and a half to oversee the work of all parties.
McGee investigated several potential locations along the Pecos before choosing a north-south crossing requiring long earthen-fill approaches on both sides of the river. Wallace looked for a route to avoid a 1.4 percent grade at Yeso Arroyo. Stewart tried several passages through Abo Cayon, one called the "long tunnel route," another the "short tunnel route." Jones considered avoiding Abo entirely by running a line south to Arizona, but this proposal was quickly abandoned.
By repeated exploration and elimination, Jones and his men eventually chose a route across the mountains with a 0.6% ruling westbound grade and 1.25% for eastbounds.
This summary does not explain the difficulties in surveying the route through eastern New Mexico. Phillip Smith, one of the surveyors on H.W. Wallace's team, sent regular reports to Lewis Kingman. One stated:
The wagon had on three barrels of water, and in passing over a sidling place one wheel was completely crushed. We left the wagon, and sent the mules into water near the Gallinas Mt. and we came on here with the wheel on the buckboard. This was a very unfortunate breakdown, causing us to lose 5 days. Both our provisions and mule feed have about given out.
On October 30, 1902, the Santa Fe created the Eastern Railway Company of New Mexico to construct the new line from Texico -- on the Texas/New Mexico border -- to Belen on the Rio Grande. The railroad awarded the initial contract for work from Belen to the top of the grade at Mountainair to B. Lantry and Sons of Strong City, Kansas.
William Barstow Strong was Santa Fe's president from 1881 to 1889. Both Barstow, California, and Strong City, Kansas, were named after him. In 2020, the population of Strong City was 386. Most buildings in the small downtown are now vacant, and virtually all of the few houses in town need repair. There is no indication that the community ever supported a company robust enough to construct a railroad across the Pecos River, much less across Eastern New Mexico.
However, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Barney Lantry, an Irish immigrant born in 1833, moved to America and settled in Wisconsin, where he learned stonecutting and masonry. He acquired his first contract with the Santa Fe Railroad in 1877 for masonry work on several bridges in Kansas and there discovered the Flint Hills and a prodigious quantity of white limestone perfect for both buildings and bridges. He established a quarry near Cottonwood, Kansas, where his company produced limestone for multiple railroad construction projects. A siding on the original Santa Fe line to Raton Pass, Cottonwood changed its name to Strong in the late 19th century, then Strong City in the 20th.
Lantry's sons, Henry E. and Charles J. L., joined him in business, and the firm became B. Lantry & Sons. As the Santa Fe expanded, so did the construction company. By 1890, B. Lantry and Sons was working for the Santa Fe in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Kansas, Colorado and Texas, constructing bridges, roundhouses and depots; grading rights-of-way; laying ties and setting rails.
The company was also linked to a unique piece of history in Winslow, Arizona. Three male faces—believed to be portraits of Barney Lantry and his sons—were carved into the sandstone of the Chilton Quarry. The carvings include an inscription for "H. Lantry" and are attributed to the stone masons of B. Lantry & Sons who worked in northern Arizona during the 1880's.
B. Lantry and Sons was far too large an operation to be headquartered in Strong City, Kansas. The following Missouri Supreme Court case gives some details of the company. Hagan v. Lantry, 89 S.W.2d 522, 338 Mo. 161 (Mo. 1935).
Two brothers Charles J. Lantry and Henry E. Lantry composed a partnership doing business under the firm name of B. Lantry Sons. The two Lantrys as a partnership, under the firm name, operated on a large scale in both "railroad contracting and farming." In their contracting business they engaged in railroad construction work "dirt work, stonework, ballasting and general railroad work." In that connection they operated "stores" or "commissaries on their works" at which they sold merchandise and supplies to their employees at a profit of "twenty-five to fifty per cent." The number of these stores in operation, at any one time, varied from "two to ten." They carried on railroad construction work at various points in Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas and owned a large amount of machinery, tools and equipment used in their construction work. They owned and operated a large ranch or farm of several thousand acres near Strong City, Kansas, which was stocked with horses, mules, cattle and hogs, also farming implements and machinery. It seems they also owned other farm lands and real estate in Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas. . . .Their "main office" was at Strong City, Kansas. They also maintained an office at Kansas City, Kansas.
Although I cannot confirm this, I suspect that B. Lantry and Sons "headquarters" in Strong City was the sons' huge cattle ranch, and that business operations were located in Kansas City.
The Lantry brothers had signed a $20,000 note to an Oklahoma resident. Charles died. All his business assets went to his brother, who later died. The note was never paid.
Both brothers' estates were probated in Kansas. The Oklahoma resident had no notice of either probate proceeding and brought an action in Missouri, the home state of the heirs of the second brother, to recover funds due under the note. The Missouri Supreme Court held that probate assets of the second brother could be used to pay the valid debt.
 |
| As westbounds leave Fort Sumner and climb out of the valley of the Pecos River, they run southwest up the side of the hill about eight miles before turning northwest at the top of the grade. Here westbound stacks are making the turn. |
 |
| Although the plains of eastern New Mexico look flat, they actually present a series of long hills and deep valleys, requiring sufficient power to maintain reasonable speed. Here a pair of C44-9W's, with two more pushing on the rear, lead a long parade of stacks up one of the hills. |
Work began in Abo Canyon with men, horses, mules, picks, shovels and fresnos. The fresno was a long blade pulled by horses or mules and used to flatten earth in the same manner as a modern road grader. The implement was called a "fresno" because it was invented and first used in Fresno, California, in the middle of California's San Joaquin Valley.
The March 13, 1903 issue of the Albuquerque Journal Democrat commented on the progress in the canyon:
At the mouth of the canyon . . . is a bridge across the arroyo seventy-five feet high. The deepest of the cuts is to be one hundred and twenty-six feet deep. . . . The men are using tons of explosives and tearing out the mountain sides at great rate. A man named Smith was blown to atoms last week.
 |
Bridge piers at the western mouth of Abo Canyon -- MP 874.2.
(Kansas Historical Society) |
 |
| Eastbound AT&SF manifest entering Abo Canyon on bridge at MP 874.2. |
 |
| Westbound AT&SF trailers exiting Abo Canyon on same bridge. |
 |
| The big cut at the west end of Abo Canyon. |
To supply the construction workers, 75 horse teams traveled day and night from Belen to the canyon. In town, billeted workers occupied every hotel room, every school room and every inch of the floor of the newly constructed railroad station. At night, camp fires lined the grade to the mountains like the lights along an airport runway.
The stream that carved Abo Canyon through rock walls winds back and forth, with twists and bends far too narrow for a train. Construction thus required the excavation of thousands of cubic feet of rock and the construction of seven bridges as the tracks pursued a line with minimum curves across the meandering stream bed.
Most of the rock was moved by mules pulling carts back and forth out of the canyon, then back in, then out again, day after day. Rock was dislodged by dynamite that often caused landslides and cave-ins. Most of the workers came from Kansas, though the AT&SF did hire local residents, frequently renting their mules and gear.
As traffic grew on Santa Fe's Transcon, the single-track line through Abo Canyon became a bottleneck (much like the single-track flyover at Vaughn and the single-track bridge across the Pecos, both discussed below). In the early 21st century, BNSF (Santa Fe's successor) constructed a second track through the canyon, as can be seen in the aerial image below.
Initial construction in Abo Canyon was mainly financed by wealthy investors' purchasing Santa Fe bonds, purchases which had virtually stopped by November 9, 1903, the bottom of the "Rich Man’s Panic," when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 42.15, a 46 percent decline from 1901 highs.
The sell-off was fueled by several factors, including the attempted assassination of President McKinley, high-interest rates, an abundance of stock offerings, and President Theodore Roosevelt's campaign to break up large trust companies.
To conserve funds, the Santa Fe stopped construction and sent all workers home, wherever home might be. Many without homes simply wandered north to Albuquerque or south to El Paso. Overnight, Belen became a ghost town. Abo Canyon emptied men as rapidly as it emptied water after a downpour.
Construction did not begin again until August 1905, when crews started working simultaneously on both the west and east ends of the Belen Cut-off. Speculators created new towns along the route. Sunnyside was born near the Pecos River, with multiple saloons, two restaurants and several tents. Its boosters hoped the village would become a division point on the Santa Fe, a reward ultimately given to Vaughn, about 60 railroad miles west. The town persevered, however, eventually becoming a county seat and changing its name to Fort Sumner.
 |
| Westbound BNSF stacks have just crossed the Texas-New Mexico border. |
Shortly after the eastern portion of the cut-off was completed to Sunnyside, the western segment was completed from Belen to the junction of the El Paso and Rock Island (now part of the Union Pacific line from Kansas City to El Paso). The crossing (called Vaughn) was a grade separation in which the Santa Fe approached on long, gradually ascending fills and then a concrete overpass above the EP&RI tracks. Santa Fe constructed a station on the east end of the overpass, plus a roundhouse and Harvey House hotel. In 1920, the population was 888. In 2020, the population was 286.
Named after Major George W. Vaughn, a Santa Fe civil engineer who worked on the Belen Cut-off, Vaughn today (April 2026) is a lonely outpost in the middle of the Southern High Plains. A few struggling motels still serve the tourists who pass through on three separate U.S. Highways. At one time, the village was a division point on both the Union Pacific and AT&SF, but when both railroads reached new working agreements with their unions, division lengths were increased, and Vaughn became a former division point, which caused the town to wither like a blighted rose bush. There is a real possibility that sometime in the 21st century, Vaughn will disappear.
For years, the BNSF overpass across the Union Pacific was single track, creating a significant bottleneck. In the early 21st century, BNSF constructed a second overpass to relieve the congestion.
 |
| The original, single-track overpass above the Union Pacific. |
 |
| The second overpass at Vaughn. |
Perhaps the single largest project on the Belen Cut-off was the construction of the Pecos River bridge at Fort Sumner. For centuries, the river had carved a huge flood plain across the New Mexico badlands. The surveyors scouted multiple potential sites before settling on one that would require the shortest fills and spans. Even so, the completed structure involved 15 separate spans stretching 1,500 feet, including lengthy fills on both approaches.
The bridge's height required the construction of a "falsework," a temporary wooden bridge to hold items in place until the structure was able to support itself, with gaps where the concrete piers were erected. A temporary track was built beside the falsework to transport construction materials as needed.
 |
Construction of falsework for Pecos River bridge.
(Kansas Historical Society) |
Initial construction of the falsework involved driving wooden pilings to bedrock. The image above shows wooden support beams being lowered by a steam crane on already secured piles. The pile driver likely was also steam-driven, with a large metal weight attached to a cable suspended on a framework that looked like an oil well derrick. The cable ran up to a pulley at the top of the frame, then came down outside to another larger pulley driven by a steam engine. As the larger pulley turned, the weight rose to the top, where a lever released the mass to fall on top of the wooden pile. This process was repeated until reaching bedrock, about 15 feet. The time necessary to firmly secure all the supports for the falsework at the Pecos River bridge must have been extreme.
 |
The falsework is completed and concrete is being poured for the pier at the south end of the bridge. Immediately below is an image of the bridge in 2017. Notice that the river is no wider, but the 21st century valley is covered with cottonwoods.
(Kansas Historical Society)
|
Work continued on the Belen Cut-off until the summer of 1907. On August 15 of that year, the Santa Fe New Mexican, which is still published in the 21st century and bills itself as the oldest newspaper company in the West, filed the following report:
The first train to make a trip over the entire length of the Eastern Railway of New Mexico, known as the Belen Cut-off, was the one carrying President E.P. Ripley and the official party accompanying Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield. The 268 miles of the Belen Cut-off saves the Santa Fe System only sixteen miles in the distance between Los Angeles and Chicago, but by the new road the heavy grades of Glorieta and Raton passes are avoided, and much better time will therefore be made than before.
Traffic on the cut-off grew rapidly, and the Santa Fe quickly installed additional and longer passing sidings on the single-track main. As traffic grew, so did siding lengths. In some areas, sidings were long enough to amount to short stretches of double-track.
Eventually, in the late 20th century, before the creation of BNSF, Santa Fe double-tracked virtually all of the Belen Cut-off in eastern New Mexico (as well as the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and Kansas).
Like the single-track Vaughn Flyover and the original line through Abo Canyon, the single-track bridge across the Pecos proved to be a significant bottleneck. In the early 21st century, BNSF constructed a second bridge across the river to relieve congestion.
 |
| Westboud traffic on the new bridge across the Pecos, with the original structure in the foreground. |
 |
| Eastbound stacks race across the eastern New Mexico plains. |
 |
| A short eastbound Z crosses U.S. 60 on the approach to the Pecos River and Fort Sumner. |
 |
| Westbound in country on the edge of desert classification. |
The beginning of this article featured an image taken from Loma Alta, the small granite outcropping rising incongruously a few hundred feet above the surrounding plains. The image showed three trains converging around an anomaly in the Transcon double-track alignment. Here is another three train image.
This unique configuration was created when the Santa Fe constructed a second track across eastern New Mexico. The double tracks ran side-by-side, as is usually the case, except for the deviation shown above and immediately below.
This image shows a rise from east to west of 180 feet. The railroad distance for the straight track is three miles, meaning the ruling grade for westbounds is approximately 1.14 percent. The railroad distance between for the track curving southward is 4.5 miles, giving a ruling westbound grade of .075 percent. Your author thus surmises that the track bulging to the south was the second track installed by AT&SF in the late 20th century to lessen the strain on westbound traffic. Every time your author has visited this location, all westbound traffic has run on the southern (left-hand main) track.
 |
| Two westbounds, the second about 4.5 miles behind. |
Loma Alta rises in the middle of a huge cattle ranch. Several ungated roads lead off U.S. 60 to a main house and barns that sit upon a small hill overlooking the treeless plain. I have twice received permission to drive my Jeep up the narrow granite outcropping and photograph the parade of BNSF intermodal traffic that stretches across this open country seemingly without pause.
A small white stucco bunkhouse sits near the main highway, and on my last visit a solitary pick-up came trundling from that bunkhouse up the rocky path to the top of the precipice just as I was driving down. I stopped beside the pick-up and said hello to its driver, who nodded back. I told him I had received permission to climb Loma Alta for photography, but he did not reply. I think he did not speak English. I tried a little of my pigeon Spanish, and he smiled, seeming either to still not understand or else to understand but find my attempt comical.
Beside him in the front seat sat a black and white Australian Shepherd. I have seen those dogs herding before, and they are absolutely amazing, as though they can speak to cattle.
"Puedo al perro?" I said. I wanted to say, "Can I pet your dog?" What I think I said was, "Can I dog?" Or else, "I can dog."
Either way, he laughed out loud and nodded. As I reached across the space between vehicles, the dog leaned out the window to sniff my hand. Then he let me pet him.
The sun had just fallen below the treeless horizon, and I tell this for one reason. Any story that ends with a dog is a good story.
 |
| "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." Will Rogers. |
To see my other posts, go to waltersrail.com.
To see my photographs on Flickr, go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpwalters/.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-542628662-bdde89caa23e4753b3ebf7cc25cb889e.jpg){kind=link}
