A company has dropped its efforts to buy the unused Tennessee Pass rail line. The family-owned firm KCVN is based in New York, and owns thousands of acres of farmland in eastern Colorado and Nebraska,.
Daily file photo
The proposed new operator of the Tennessee Pass rail line has no intention of hauling oil through Eagle County.
That unequivocal statement to the Eagle County Commissioners came Monday from Sarah Thompson Cassidy, the community liaison for the Colorado, Midland & Pacific Railway. That firm is a subsidiary of the Rio Grande Pacific Corporation, which operates lines in seven states.
Colorado, Midland in late December announced it had reached a lease agreement for the line with the owner, the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific also operates the line between Denver and Dotsero via the Moffat Tunnel. Union Pacific stopped using the Tennessee Pass line in the mid-1990s, and much of the line has fallen into disrepair in the quarter-century since.