Deseret Power Railway

Driving back from Denver my route took me through Northwest Colorado. Going North on State Highway 139 towards Dinosaur National Monument I noticed what appeared to be a new railroad. It wasn't hard to notice because other than sagebrush, a few cows and the occasional gas pipeline station, there wasn't anything else out there. What's more, it appeared to be an electric railroad. There were wires strung above the tracks just like for the local commuter train here in Portland. Well, that's just downright bizarre. I didn't see a train or even any cars, just this track. Why would someone build an electric railroad all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?

I finally got around to looking it up. It was built for one purpose only: to haul coal from the Deserado Mine northeast of Rangely, Colorado to the Bonanza Power Plant 35 miles away in Utah. The train is fairly short, only 44 cars. Right now the train makes one trip a day, five days a week, and that's enough coal to keep the turbines spinning.

This railway is not connected to any others, so everything for this project (the mine, the power plant, the train and its' track) had to be hauled in by truck.

This mine is an underground mine, so there isn't much to see up top, except for the 3 mile long conveyor belt that carries the coal from the mine to the train load point. The big mines in the Powder River Basin, the ones that supply low sulfur coal to the Midwest and the East Coast, are strip mines.

Desert Power Railway

Update January 2021 replaced missing map.