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Railcar Ruckus
Thirty miles of cars irritate businesses in San Luis Valley
December 4, 2006
By Joe Hanel | Herald Denver Bureau
DEL NORTE - Last year, tourists were asking Fred Oglesby about the rocks in the potato fields.
This year, their No. 1 question to the finance director of the Rio Grande County Museum is "What are the railroad cars?"
The rocks in the fields are easy to explain - farmers rip them out after the yearly harvest to make their fields easier to plow.
The train cars, though, are another story.
Drivers on U.S. Highway 160 through the San Luis Valley can't miss the railroad cars - all 30 miles of them.
Almost all of them look the same - rusty metal flatbed cars with a cryptic code like "TTX 778309" painted on the side. They stretch from one end of Rio Grande County to the other, with small breaks between every dozen or so.
The cars started showing up in South Fork in the spring. The train grew east and now reaches Monte Vista, with another couple of batches arriving every week.
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