Rocky Mountain Oil Company

[CM Auditor]

 As a CM guy who found his world got much better defined because I read Dan Edwards Second Volume of his seven volume opus on the South Park.  All sorts of interfaces with the South Park that had not been documented in the collected literature of the Midland.  Is anyone in the South Park community modeling the delivery of the broad gauge tank cars of the Rocky Mountain Oil company that were delivered from the refinery at Overland by the D&NO/DT&G/UPD&G/C&S to the Midland and then to the South Park, DL&G, C&S to the oil burning mines of Leadville?
In 1900 the officers of both the C&S and the RGW took control of the Colorado Midland and the entire operating thrust of the Midland changed.  For many years, i.e., after Rev. Morris Cafky published his book  Colorado Midland, the community was not really aware of the take over of the Midland.  So, for instance, the Midland and the C&S exchanged coal from Baldwin at the "union station" at Newett.  Because it must have been more cost effective to transport the coal over the broad gauge Midland to Leadville than using the all narrow gauge route to that point.  
In the case of the RMOC shipments, the oil went from the oil fields in Florence by pipeline to Overland where the Refinery was located on the UPD&G at the time.  The refined product was loaded into tank cars and moved by the UPD&G to Colorado Springs where it was transferred to the Midland for transport to Leadville and then turned back over to the South Park for the final delivery.
Any information that you might have would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Rick Steele]

Hi Tom,

How can we get hold of Dan Edwards South Park books?

Rick

[CM Auditor]

Hi Rick,
Welcome aboard and you can contact Dan at his email      [e-mail]

Let him know you heard about his series of C&S books on Darel's C&Sn3 Discussion Forum.

Enjoy

Tom VanWormer

[Keith Hayes]

Tom, sorry to ignore you, but the oil shipment took me a while to digest.

Where did the Midland deliver said oil?

[CM Auditor]

Keith,
To the C&S yards, Leadville.  The Midland picked up the tank cars at the C&S/ATSF yards in Colo Spgs.  Dan Edwards was able to locate a Denver Newspaper article describing the effort.  Back in 2008, Adrian Hundhausen found a Leadville newspaper article from the early 1890s stating that most of the mines had transferred from coal to oil to run their boilers.

Tom

Keith Hayes [via C&Sn3 Discussion Forum] wrote:

Tom, sorry to ignore you, but the oil shipment took me a while to digest.

Where did the Midland deliver said oil?

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[Don Gustavson II]

I may have a little room on a future part of my layout to have an Oil Transfer point, from Standard gauge to Narrow gauge.
Sounds like this may be the tie-in to an actual historical place for me.
From what I am underdstanding here. The Rocky Mountain Oil Company transferred oil from the Colorado Midland Railroad to the C&S (South Park) at Leadville.
Any pictures out there of such an Oil Transfer facility?

[CM Auditor]

To date, the fans of the Rocky Mountain Oil Company have only been able to find Sanborns of the loading and transfer locations (Overton for the refinery and tank car loading site, Leadville for the unloading site).  Unloading appears to be a small structure with a steam pump and and hose storage.  It appears the hose was connected to the bottom drain on the tank car.  The pump appears to be able to lift the crude up about 200 feet to the distribution system to the many mines that used the product.  All of the piping was buried, so the oil could be pumped both winter and summer.

Down in Colorado Springs, either the Colorado Springs Gas plant used a hose and a pipe and emptied the tank cars from the expansion dome.  So there are two documented methods of unloading tank cars.  No pictures have shown up so far.

Tom VanWormer
CM Auditor