The Breckenridge Heritage Alliance is starting a restoration project that is years in the making.
The High Line Railroad Park’s historic rotary snowplow, which was an engine used to plow train tracks, is being repainted. Executive Director Larissa O’Neil said this isn’t your ordinary paint job, as most painters wouldn’t take on the task because the snowplow was originally painted with lead paint.
“Not only is it a unique structure to paint in the first place, but it requires a full lead abatement process. … Most painters, contractors I reached out to wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole,” O’Neil said, noting that in order to complete the project, the painter is required to have a lead paint certification.
“That railroad was quite an adventure,” Knapp said. “… It was always known as the high line because it went over the two highest-traction railroad passes at the time, Boreas and Fremont Pass. … Prior to the plow coming in, the tracks had to be plowed with the plows attached to the front end of the locomotives, which was a very dangerous thing.”
In the early 1890s, the Denver Leadville Gunnison Railway Co. purchased a Leslie Plow.
The plow operated with a locomotive engine, a pilot, an engineer and one to two men responsible for stoking the fire that drove the plow. Knapp pointed out that the rotary plow that sits in Breckenridge never worked the high line route and actually worked in Alaska but that it is a Leslie-designed plow.
“I lovingly call the plow the savior of Breckenridge and Leadville simply because the locomotives were just not able to remove the snow,” Knapp said. “… In my estimation, had it not been for that plow’s existence, it’s quite likely that Breckenridge would not have seen the success that it did as a gold mining town.”
