Speaking of the Clear Creek District

[Keith Hayes]

I purchased a copy of C&S Clear Creek District Memories & Then Some... authored by one of our contributors. It is a fine book, and I have occasionally been paging through it and reading it. There are a number of fine photos and superior accounts of several tourist tramways.

But this is what really caught my eye (from page 98)

Business in the mining country is on the boom. The heaviest train ever hauled over the Clear Creek Branch of the Colorado & Southern Railroad cam down the canon yesterday.
This train was made up of 27 cars loaded with 968 tons of ore. Twenty cars of this ore ore consigned to the reduction plant at Colorado City and 7 cars to the plant at Leadville....

From June 12, 1935.

Seems like I have a valid excuse to receive shipments of ore from Idaho and Black Hawk to the smelter in Leadville!

Now back to Kokomo.

[Chris Walker]

Hi Keith and maybe the Author too....

I had read that a while ago and forgotten it, thanks for the reminder.  I get the feeling the Paper's reporter or his source was in error.  However, with the Climax rush on at this time and the C&S trying hard to abandon the lines, was it normal policy to overload the cars that much?

This train was made up of 27 cars loaded with 968 tons of ore.

At 35.85 tons per car that works out to, which is 71,700 Lbs per Carload, the Ph-1 Coalcars were listed at CAPY 50000LBs  *55000LBs Load LMT. and LT.WT. 18700LBs. OR  68700 Lbs gross.

Or looking at it from a layman's view, having filled out a number of T-15 tonnage lists a long time ago, perhaps slightly overloaded by a small margin and called out the Gross tonnage of the train, not actually the weight of the ore within.