Art Journal

We went back up to the mountains to paint and bike ride one afternoon recently and ended up near the east portal of the Moffat Tunnel.  The railroad used to go over Rollins Pass with many switchbacks and small tunnels, but the pass, at 11,676 ft. was nearly impassible in winter. The railroad decided to build a tunnel in the late 1920's. The Moffat Tunnel is a six miles long, goes under the continental divide and hooks the train tracks from the Denver side of the mountains to Winter Park CO. Building it was a huge undertaking.  While it was being built, (Wikipedia) the railroad had a small settlement at each end where the workers lived during the project.  After it was finished the settlements were abandoned. Some of the old rundown houses and shacks are still there. This is what I painted on this plein air trip.

The abandoned rail route over the pass is now in the National Register of Historic Places because of the tremendous engineering involved in building the rail line over the mountains. It's now a trail and 4WD road along the old rail bed, but you can't go all the way because of a collapsed tunnel at the top.

The End of the Line, 8 x 10