(The following Associated Press article appeared on the Billings Gazette website on June 5.)
SARATOGA, Wyo. — It’s the end of the line for the old Slow and Easy.
The rail line that linked Walcott Junction and Saratoga for 105 years is being dismantled by a salvage company. The Wyoming and Colorado Railroad Co. has sold the line to A&K Railroad Materials, and salvage work began a few weeks ago.
Rail traffic ceased when the Louisiana Pacific sawmill in Saratoga closed in 2003.
Intermountain Resources, which bought the mill, and the Carbon County Commission appealed to the federal Surface Transportation Board to keep the line open, but the board granted the Wyoming and Colorado Railroad the right to abandon the 23.7-mile line last year.
Piles of ties and stacks of rails are all that remain of the rail line now.
The line began as the Saratoga and Encampment Railroad – hence the nickname, Slow and Easy.
The line was built to ship copper that was mined in the nearby Sierra Madre mountains, hauled out on an aerial tramway and smelted at Encampment.
The Saratoga and Encampment Railroad served the mining, lumber and ranching industries until 1928, when it went broke. Local residents bought the line and gave it to Union Pacific.
Perue said Union Pacific tried to abandon the line in 1974 but received permission to abandon only the Saratoga-to-Encampment portion.
He said the railroad right of way might still be publicly owned, but extensive legal research would be needed to determine that for certain.