(This page printed from UtahRails.net, Copyright 2000-2011 Don Strack)

D&RGW Utah Branch Lines

Compiled by Don Strack

This page was last updated on January 30, 2011.

(Sources at bottom of page.)

Listed Alphabetically

Bennett Branch

Also known as the South Syracuse Branch. Branch ran due west from Layton, to a sugar beet dump in Syracuse (right where today's Smith's grocery store is). Since the branch is not listed in any D&RGW summary of branches, it was possibly operated by D&RGW but built and owned by Layton Sugar Co. for sugar beet loading.

From a history that I did for Syracuse:

"Three people have told me about a rail line in South Syracuse that went due west from the Layton sugar factory. Apparently the branch went due west along the half section line of Section 19 of T4N, R1W and Sections 24 and 23 of T4N, R2W. At the center of Section 23 the line turned northwest towards the northwest corner of section 23, ending at a beet dump on 1000 West, 500 feet south of 2700 South.

"The Rio Grande's Bennett Branch was built and owned by the Layton Sugar Company to serve their beet dump in South Syracuse, near present day 2700 South and 1000 West. Property for the spur was purchased in October 1926, although the spur may already been built. (Davis County Book of Deeds 1‑H, pp.181, 183)

"The beet dump and spur may have been removed by 1952. In March 1952 the sugar company sold a parcel of land in section 24, 33 feet wide by 2,651 feet long to Allen A. Adams. James E. Ellison was President and J. B. Cooley was Secretary of the Layton Sugar Company. (Davis County Book of Records 36, p.96)

"In January 1955 Layton Sugar Company sold a 1.97 acre (577.5 feet by 149 feet) parcel to George H. Bennett Jr. The parcel was located along 1000 West, 509 feet south of 2700 South and was the typical size for a beet dump. (Davis County Book of Records 178, p.63)

"In June 1955 the Layton Sugar Company sold a 2.89 acre (33 feet by 3,809 feet) parcel to the Ellison Ranching Company. The parcel ended at the west line of the Denver and Rio Grande mainline and included a 12 degree curve in the description. (Davis County Book of Records 88, p.435) This is interpreted to be the connection of the Bennett Branch with the D&RG mainline."

Bingham Branch

Castle Valley Branch

Additional information:

Sources
ICC Valuation Docket 960 (26 ICC Val. 746)

See also Castle Valley Railway corporate information, including a summary from LeMassena as to why the road was built.

Diamond Quarry Spur

Farnsworth Spur

See Farnsworth Spur section in Syracuse Area History.

Garfield Branch

Goshen Valley Branch

Heber Branch

(see Provo Canyon Branch)

Hooper Branch

Initial construction in 1905 by D&RG.

Iron King Branch

Jennings Spur

Initial construction 3 miles to Jennings Quarry in 1892; extended to 4.97 miles to Potters Quarry in 1900; removed in 1917

Kenilworth Branch

Replaced Kenilworth & Helper Railway, which connected with D&RGW at Spring Glen, east of Helper.

See also Utah Coal—Kenilworth Mines.

Kingsville Spur

See Kingsville Spur section in Syracuse Area History.

Lake Park Branch

Lark Branch

Little Cottonwood Branch

End of track, with a 17 car side track, after ?? was at MP 1.6, just short of the UP crossing at Sandy.

In 1939, D&RGW built the Alta Lodge at Alta in Little Cottonwood Canyon. (Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 2006)

General description of branch, from the 1937 D&RGW Branchline summary:

Marysvale Branch

In 1956, the traffic on the Marysvale Branch included
(information from Jim Eager, posted to drgw@yahoogroups, March 4, 2001)

Originating traffic:

Terminating traffic:

Additional information about operations on the Marysvale Branch
(information from Jim Eager, posted to drgw@yahoogroups, March 5, 2001)

The June 1949 timetable still listed trains 11 and 12 to Marysville with an air-conditioned coach and also bus service. (information from Steve Seguine, posted to drgw@yahoogroups, March 5, 2001)

According to the 1955 employee timetable, there were wye tracks on the Marysvale Branch at Marysvale, Richfield, Salina, Manti, Ephraim, and Oak Creek. Steve Seguine remembered that the old Conoco building at the eastern edge of Marysvale was along the west tail of the wye.

The 1968 Engineering Department Condensed Profile for the Marysvale Branch showed wyes at the Moroni Spur Junction (mp 52.8), Manti (mp 60.3) and Salina (mp 86.4).

Out of service after April 1983 Thistle slide; ICC approved formal abandonment in August 1986 and rails and ties were removed starting in September 1986, and completed by spring 1987.

Mammoth Branch

Joint operation with OSL, then with UP, to provide access to the mill of the Mammoth Milling Co.

Morrison Branch

Former San Pete Valley Railway

Ogden Sugar Works Branch

Orem Branch

Purchased from the bankrupt Salt Lake & Utah Railroad in 1946.

Park City Branch

Timeline:

The last train to operate in Parleys Canyon, east of Sugar House, was on Wednesday, January 5, 1956. That last train operated over the six miles of line between Sugar House and the lime stone quarry of Utah Portland Cement Co., and was made up of a D&RGW Fairbanks-Morse switcher, five gondola carloads of limerock, and a caboose. Within hours, buldozers began covering the tracks at the loading station at the quarry, in preparation for the improvement of U.S. 40 in Parleys Canyon, which would see the track buried by 18 feet of fill. After that last train, service was only to Alexander, at the mouth of the canyon, below the Stillman Bridge, where the cement company was to haul its limerock by truck to a new loading station at that point. The engineer was Clarence Morandi and the conductor was Golden Calloway, both of whom had apparently been making the same trip every day since 1946. (Salt Lake Tribune, January 5, 1956, courtesy of Dave Gayer.)

See also the railroad portion of History of Transportation in Parley's Canyon.

Pleasant Valley Branch

Timeline:

See also Utah Coal—Pleasant Valley Mines.

Provo Canyon Branch

Timeline:

Summer 1966
In the summer of 1966 D&RGW operated one of the very last 'Heber Local' runs up from Provo to Heber on the Provo Canyon Branch. Rail traffic at Wasatch County's largest city had declined with improvements to parallel Highway 189. The depot had been boarded up by then, with weeds lining the right of way. Back in the 1930's, Heber City was the largest shipper of sheep by rail in the United States. There was a weigh scale adjacent to the depot, for documenting the transfer of gilsonite, trucked from Vernal, Utah to the railhead at Heber City. In November of 1968, the mothballed line was reopened by the D&RGW to haul the National Christmas Tree (harvested in nearby Daniel's Canyon) from Heber via a specially equipped trailer flat toward Washington, DC. It was a somewhat glorious ending to service the branch. Of course the line's history took a positive turn when the upper 18 miles were preserved in 1970 for a tourist operation that continues to this day. Unfortunately, the former D&RGW Heber yard area has been stripped of it's trackage. The now 'trackless' D&RGW depot survives to this day, utilized by a private business on 6th West at Center Street. (James Belmont, January 30, 2011)

(click here for more information about the Provo Canyon Branch after it became a tourist railroad, beginning in 1970, including a timeline of events through to present day operations)

San Pete Valley Branch

Former San Pete Valley Railway

See also a History of Railroads in San Pete Valley.

Spring Canyon Branch

Timeline:

D&RGW Spring Canyon Branch possibly abandoned in 1954 in ICC Finance Docket 18361, decided 2/16/54. (282 ICC 810)

See also Utah Coal—Spring Canyon Mines

Sunnyside Branch

(click here for a separate page about the Sunnyside Branch)

Tintic Branch

Maximum grade: 3 percent (4 percent after 1940)

Maximum curvature: 12 degrees

D&RGW's Tintic Branch was cut back from Silver City to Eureka in 1943. The agent was removed from the Eureka depot in September 1961, but the agency had been closed by special permission since January 1961, after the last shipping mine was closed in December 1960. Although other mines may have begun shipping ore at some later time, the 1961 application showed that the last train operated out of Eureka on December 29, 1960. At some time between May 1966 and June 1967, the time period between D&RGW Utah Division timetables No. 6 and No. 7, Rio Grande's Tintic Branch was changed from ending at Eureka, to end at the Iron King mine on the former Goshen Valley Railroad. The Goshen Valley Branch had originally consisted of two lines; one from its connection to the Tintic Branch at Pearl Junction to the Iron King mine, and another from Dividend Junction on the line to Iron King, to the Dividend mine.

This change in 1966-1967 eliminated the line to Dividend (the Dividend mine had closed in 1949), and changed the Tintic Branch to end at the Iron King mine (new mile post 33.8), instead of extending all the way to Eureka (old mile post 39.1). In 1958, Kennecott Copper opened a lead-zinc-silver mine at Burgin, very near the old Iron King mine, making this the end of the branch, at mile post 32.4. Kennecott continued to work the Burgin mine, along with adding the Trixie mine in 1969, until both were closed in mid 1978 due to high costs, including pumping to fight the increasing water levels in the mines. In November 1982, Kennecott leased the Burgin mine to the Sunshine Mining Co., which continued to sell ores to Kennecott as smelter flux for its large smelter at Garfield on the south shore of Great Salt Lake. A heap leach gold mine was also opened at Burgin, but the entire mine has been closed since 1985. After Sunshine closed the Burgin mine, Kennecott sold its interest to Tintic Utah Metals, a jointly held subsidiary of the still existing Chief Consolidated Mining Co., and Young Poong Corp., of Korea, and as late as 2000, Tintic Utah Metals continued to process the dumps from the Trixie mine in its refurbished Burgin mill.

The last train to the Burgin mine was in 1986 when D&RGW ran a box car of equipment to the mine. The crew waited for it to be unloaded and returned. Conductor Neal Thorpe passed this news on to James Belmont during an interview in 1992. (James Belmont, email dated December 10, 2011)

In the late 1987 timeframe, D&RGW continued to provide service along its Tintic Branch, using Train 665 to designate the train itself. The dolomite mine at Keigley was dormant after U.S. Steel's closing of its Geneva Works, but would soon reopen to supply material after the steel mill reopened under new management.

In May 2002 as part of a larger purchase of 62.77 miles of Union Pacific trackage in Utah, the 16 miles of the Tintic Industrial Lead (D&RGW's Tintic Branch, also known as The Elberta Line) was sold to Utah Transit Authority for future light rail construction. UP retained surface operation rights to continue common carrier serivice.

While the tracks remain in place in mid 2004, after 1985, D&RGW, and now UP after its control of D&RGW in 1996, only operated trains as far as the limestone quarry at Keigley (mile post 16.0), until Geneva Steel closed in 2001, taking away the need for limestone. Occasional traffic is still generated by the LDS Church's grain elevator at Elberta, at mile post 25.1.

On September 14, 2007, Union Pacific as successor to D&RGW, applied to abandon its Tintic Industrial Lead. The application was approved and took effect on January 2, 2008. As late as February 2009, the line was still being used to store surplus rail cars.

Sources for D&RGW Utah Branches

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