@breezinup posted:Tom, with respect to the UP, isn't the Moffat Tunnel route more direct to points west than going north to Cheyenne and then heading west?
Yes. It is definitely more viable -- for now -- than the Tennessee Pass route, but it's still a mountain road running through canyons for miles and miles, and thus more maintenance intensive. It only takes a train two or three hours to run north out of Denver on the UP, through Greeley, to the UP transcon. And UP has long ago moved its preferred traffic off of the Kansas Pacific onto the Marysville cutoff at Topeka, so not much remains going through Denver. I have driven across western Colorado and Kansas a couple of times in recent years, Most of the block signals on the KP have been removed, and the track is old looking. I think the maximum authorized speed on most of it is 40 MPH or less. It just looks like a line that is out of favor with its owner.
mlaughlinnyc reported seeing some UP drag freight trains on the Moffatt, typical of the few trains still running on the KP.
None of that traffic has potential for helping the Tennessee Pass route.
