Chris,
The dilapidated station in the yellow is the old D&RGW Station. It was the freight station and when reassembled, it is LOOOOONG.... Somewhere I have some photos of it, and some of the old 1883 rail rhat the D&RGW had in its yard up there.
On the D&RG Leadville was reached by a track which was literally a very long siding from Malta back to the main line via the Ryan Cutoff. The Cutoff was abandoned in 1941. After Passenger Service was discontinued into Leadville, the north leg of the loop was abandoned and the D&RG's presence in Leadville was a stub end spur from Malta to the C&S connestion in Leadville.
The D&RGW got much of its main line ballast from the Arkansas Valley Smelter slag piles in Leadville. They found that it held together as well as rock and the dark color helped melt the snow. (It was also probably cheaper than paying a quarry)
Teh CM came in via Arkansas Junction and Actually came in on the subsidiary Aspen Short Line Railway, as their main line parallelled the D&RG's.
The Brick Station that the LC&S uses is the former C&S Passenger depot. It was built by the DL&G (UP) to replace an older, smaller facility. The old C&S Freight House was last used by the local lumber Yard and it was an extremely large wooden structure, you could still see the C&S lettering on the end of it if you looked hard enough. It was immediately north and slightly west of the Passenger Depot.
I didn't see it the last time that I was up there, so I'm assuming that it's gone. But, of course, I wasn't looking for it either....
The LC&S Roundhouse up there was the original 3' gauge roundhouse with an extension added to the front which brought the stalls from 6 to 3. (remember the triangle diminishes... etc.). Outside of it is where the last known Tiffany Reefer stood for many years until is was knocked down in a Burlington "Yard Clean Up".
The last time that I was up there when it was C&S, I was just in time to see a C&S wooden caboose being loaded on the back of a flatbed truck headed over Independence Pass for Aspen, all painted up with the C&S "MeatBall" Trademark.
Leadville was a really booming and important place in its heyday, and the most important railroad center in the area, with the Colorado Midland, Union Pacific (DL&G) later C&S, and the Denver & Rio Grande all competing for traffic.
Rick
