The 10,221-foot-high summit of the former Rio Grande main line over Tennessee Pass sits quiet and rusty today, with heavy trains no longer grinding through the lofty 2,550-foot tunnel beneath the Continental Divide. Still “railbanked” by Union Pacific more than twenty years since the last passage of a train, the future of the route still hangs in a precarious balance. In this view looking at the west switch of Tennessee Pass siding, I’m not sure which I find more disturbing—the graffiti on buildings at this remote mountain location, or the decapitated signals that will never highball another train.
