Home of the St. Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad, my model railroad layout project.
The Rosetta Railroad rostered a variety of equipment. The railroad focused on a mix of express traffic, less-than-carload freight, and unit freight during the early years. It had early interchange contracts with the surrounding routes; foreign equipment was often seen on the railroad from the early days onward, becoming more common as the Rosetta Railroad's own fleet aged and was not replaced.
The locomotives were seen as a special part of the railroad, well-loved and well-maintained even through hard times. The early days saw frequent service with short trains, while later advances allowed freight to carry longer trains. With the popularity boom of automobiles and decline of rail traffic, passenger trains were consolidated, replaced by railbuses, or removed entirely when the ICC allowed.
When possible, the Rosetta Railroad preferred to order from its two favorite suppliers, Schnenectady Locomotive Works and St. Charles Car Company. As these were rolled up into American Locomotive Works and American Car & Foundry, the Rosetta Railroad also ordered from other shops within those companies, but preferred to maintain relationships with those builders until it ceased ordering new equipment. However, the railroad also purchased much of its equipment used, and built some of its own rolling stock at the small erecting shops in Rosetta when needed.
As the railroad slowly declined in traffic from the 1920s onward, it converted its erecting shops into contract maintenance shops. They would perform emergency repairs and light to medium work for the local railroads, which brought in some much-needed cash. A reputation for quality work sustained the Rosetta Railroad through the Great Depression and up to WWII, when a demand for lead and food goods created a small boom for the railroad and surrounding communities. The postwar years saw the Rosetta Railroad purchase its last orders of rolling stock in 1949: a trio of Alco RS-1 diesels, three Budd RDCs (two RDC-2s and an RDC-3), and some new steel box cars.
A surprising number of Rosetta Railroad locomotives survive into preservation, mostly in static display but some operational. The Alco diesels served until abandonment in 1967. One was sold off to a grain elevator cooperative, who scrapped it in the 90s. The other two were supposed to go to a quarry and were paid for, but the quarry went bankrupt due to shady financial deals and never picked up the locomotives. They ended up as property of Burr County, who left them to sit until 1996, when they were both restored by the Friends of the Rosetta Railroad for the newly-revived Rosetta Scenic Railroad and run today, pulling tourist trains and serving the handful of freight customers on the line.
