Overview | |
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Headquarters | Yuma, Arizona |
Locale | Yuma County, Arizona, USA |
Dates of operation | 1914 (predecessor)–2005 |
Technical | |
Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
Yuma Valley Railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Yuma Valley Railway was a heritage railroad in Arizona, which formerly operated an excursion passenger train on the rail line following the Colorado River levee between Yuma and Gadsden. The railroad's train has not operated since 2005, when the line was embargoed by the Bureau of Reclamation. The equipment had been parked idle across the canal and south of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot; at least one passenger car was relocated to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in May 2013. [1]
The YVRY was originally owned by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation. It was part of the Interior Department's irrigation and flood control project along the levee of the Colorado River.
The U.S. Government's railroad was known as the Yuma Valley Railroad and operated from 1914 and into the 1980s. The Yuma Valley Railroad originally extended 25 miles from Yuma to the Arizona/Mexico border town of San Luis. In 1947 the Yuma Valley Railroad was leased to and operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad, at which time the 9 miles from Gadsden to San Luis were idle and later abandoned.
The Colorado River Levee Linear Park runs along the levee and the path of part of the railroad in Yuma. [2]
A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the power source is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels. The most common are diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-hydraulic.
The Virginia and Truckee Railroad is a privately owned heritage railroad, headquartered in Virginia City, Nevada. Its private and publicly owned route is 14 miles (23 km) long. When first constructed in the 19th century, it was a commercial freight railroad which was originally built to serve the Comstock Lode mining communities of northwestern Nevada.
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The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, often abbreviated as the D&SNG, is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge heritage railroad that operates on 45.2 mi (72.7 km) of track between Durango and Silverton, in the U.S. state of Colorado. The railway is a federally-designated National Historic Landmark and was also designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1968.
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The GE 80-ton switcher is a diesel-electric locomotive model built by GE Transportation Systems. It is classified as a B-B type locomotive. It was designed for industrial and light switching duties around railheads and ports.
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The Fort Eustis Military Railroad is an intra-plant United States Army rail transportation system existing entirely within the post boundaries of the United States Army Transportation Center and Fort Eustis (USATCFE), Fort Eustis, Virginia. It has served to provide railroad operation and maintenance training to the US Army and to carry out selected material movement missions both within the post and in interchange with the US national railroad system via a junction at Lee Hall, Virginia. It consists of 31 miles (50 km) of track broken into three subdivisions with numerous sidings, spurs, stations and facilities.
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The Rio Grande Scenic Railroad of Colorado was a heritage railway that operated from 2006 to 2019 in and around the San Luis Valley as a subsidiary of the San Luis and Rio Grande Railroad. The heritage railroad ceased operating excursions following a wildfire that damaged some of their facilities, as well as the parent company SLRG entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2019.
The Yuma Project is a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project built to irrigate over 68,000 acres (280 km2) of land in Yuma County, Arizona and parts of Imperial County, California. The project is designed to exploit year-round farming conditions and water from the Colorado River. It consists of the Laguna Diversion Dam, pumping plants, a power plant, a 53-mile (85 km) system of canals, 218 miles (351 km) of lateral canals, levees and drains. The project began in 1903 and the majority of the work was completed by 1915. It was the first dam and reclamation project on the Colorado River and workers had to overcome many natural and logistical obstacles to build and maintain it. The Laguna Diversion Dam was replaced by the Imperial Dam as the Project's water source between 1941 and 1948. Today, it serves 275 farms and over 94,000 people.
Steamboats on the Colorado River operated from the river mouth at the Colorado River Delta on the Gulf of California in Mexico, up to the Virgin River on the Lower Colorado River Valley in the Southwestern United States from 1852 until 1909, when the construction of the Laguna Dam was completed. The shallow draft paddle steamers were found to be the most economical way to ship goods between the Pacific Ocean ports and settlements and mines along the lower river, putting in at landings in Sonora state, Baja California Territory, California state, Arizona Territory, New Mexico Territory, and Nevada state. They remained the primary means of transportation of freight until the advent of the more economical railroads began cutting away at their business from 1878 when the first line entered Arizona Territory.
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The GE 25-ton switcher is a model of diesel-electric switcher locomotive that was produced by GE Transportation at their Erie, Pennsylvania, facility between 1941 and 1974. Most examples were produced for industrial customers or the United States Armed Forces, although a number of examples were purchased by freight railroads as well. The majority of production was for customers in the United States and Canada, but export models were produced for buyers on five continents. Production totaled approximately 550 units over 33 years, making it one of the most widely produced switchers in American history.