Revisiting the Great Thistle Landslide on the Denver and Rio Grande Western

In 1983 the mountain above the small railroad town of Thistle slid into the canyon, severing two major US highways, cutting the mainline of the Denver and Rio Grande, and flooding and destroying the small town and causing the abandonment of the historic Marysvale branch.
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We are screwing around this week looking at the remains of the town, the slide, and revisiting the Utah floods of 1983, one of the most expensive natural disasters in US history. (OK it was no Katrina but... ) Then on to the abandoned Marysvale branch next week.
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The first railroad track laid through Thistle was a narrow-gauge spur line servicing coal mines near today's Scofield Reservoir, built in 1878 by the Utah and Pleasant Valley Railway. By 1890, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, which acquired the line in a foreclosure sale in 1882,[18] had rebuilt the line to standard gauge. The D&RGW connected this line with one they had built west from Colorado, completing a link from Salt Lake City to Denver.

The railroad built several facilities in Thistle to service and prepare trains for the change in grade and curvature of the line. The railroad placed helper engines on eastbound trains at Thistle for the ascent to Soldier Summit. The town provided a meal service for the trains until the use of on-board dining cars eliminated the need for meal stops.(Wikipedia)
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Rio Grande's westbound train 17, the Rio Grande Zephyr (scheduled to be replaced by Amtrak's California Zephyr 10 days later), running late, passed through Thistle and gingerly treaded the shifted track across the slide area late Thursday evening after waiting for an eastbound empty coal hopper train to clear. The RGZ would be the last train through for months.

By 1 a.m., now Friday, April 15, the rising river water had inundated the highway and the tracks, forcing their closure. Not only was the D&RGW affected, but so was the coal-hauling Utah Railway, which shares the Rio Grande main line (Utah has trackage rights from a junction just above Helper to Thistle and owns one of the two main tracks from Thistle to Provo).

Rio Grande track crews immediately began removing track and switches up the canyon. The Marysvale Branch, which follows Thistle Creek south, was also submerged, as was U.S. 6 to the east. All residents of Thistle-22 families-were evacuated, and by Monday, April 18, the entire town was under water, with only a few rooftops visible here and there.

Workers and heavy equipment of the Rio Grande, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), Utah County (Provo), and four private contractors labored feverishly to stem the steady advance of the mountain, but it was a losing battle. By Monday morning, the slide, advancing at the rate of 3 feet per hour, had buried the canyon with the creation of a natural dam some 600 feet wide and 50 feet high. The dam continued to grow, and water depth behind it reached 80 to 85 feet. The railroad subsequently estimated that 3.3 million dollars' worth of its equipment and property were lost underwater.

The Rio Grande Zephyr, trapped in Salt Lake City, detoured home to Denver over the Union Pacific via Laramie on Friday, April 15, with UP GP40X 9003 (UP requires cab signals on lead units) piloting the Grande's F9's. The RGZ finished out its D&RGW career running as a Denver-Grand Junction (Colo.) turn, with the railroad providing bus service between Grand Junction and Salt Lake City, via Salina.

http://utahrails.net

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Please watch: "The Trains of Santa Cruz California"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv0S8Sa18mY
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