PIKES PEAK COG RAILWAY CLOSED FOR ALL OF 2018, 2019. TENTATIVE PLAN TO REOPEN IN MAY 2020.

TUES 12 JUNE.  The Manitou Springs City Council gave a unanimous preliminary vote of approval Tuesday night for a deal that would enable the rebuilding of the historic Cog Railway and keep its train cars chugging up and down Pikes Peak for decades to come. Another vote still must be taken on the agreement with Oklahoma Publishing Co., parent company of The Broadmoor hotel and the Cog Railway. Under the pact, the city would give the ownership group two tax breaks, incentives it says it needs to invest $75 million to $95 million to rebuild the railway. In March, Broadmoor President and CEO Jack Damioli announced that the aging railway had "run its useful life," and a study would weigh whether it should be refurbished or permanently closed. The analysis found that nearly $100 million likely would be needed to restore the system, rebuilding the track and expanding, remodeling or even demolishing the railway's Manitou depot.

Manitou Springs officials have grappled to address a $500,000 annual tax revenue loss expected to result from the railway's closure. "If we do this project, it's going to be a good thing for the Cog, it's going to be a good thing for Manitou, and we all prosper. If we don't do it, it's going to have the opposite effect," Gary Pierson, president and CEO of Oklahoma Publishing, told council members at a special meeting Tuesday night. "There can't be winners and losers here. We both have to succeed in this, because there's too much time, effort, money and history at stake. "The council voted unanimously, with Councilman Nancy Fortuin absent, to OK the agreement. A second vote giving final approval is expected June 26 after a public hearing. Work on the Cog could begin in August with a partial reopening in May 2020, in time for the debut later that year of the $50 million Summit House that would greet Cog riders atop Pikes Peak. But Oklahoma Publishing also has to work with contractors in Switzerland and Germany to ensure that they can supply the project materials at the cost they've projected.

Under the arrangement, the architecture and appearance of the historic railway and its depots and other structures would remain the same. The Cog also would decommission four of eight train cars, refurbish the other four, and buy three new, 240-seat cars and a snowplow, hoping to operate the railway year-round, Pierson has said. 

New steel tariffs set by the Trump administration could spike costs of the project or even kill it, Pierson has said. If it does proceed, the project will be unique in North America - and possibly the world - and would draw intrigued visitors and national media attention, Pierson has said.For 126 years, the railway ran a scenic, 8.9-mile trip from a depot on Manitou Springs' western edge to the summit. City officials estimate 300,000 people annually have taken the ride in recent years.

The Obstacles of Working on the Cog: There are a lot of different things to take into consideration when it comes to working on the Cog. The resources are very limited and all are outside of the U.S. for trains and replacement parts. The Broadmoor Pikes Peak Cog Railway is one of two cog railways in the United States, and one of only 40 in the world. Couple that with the difficulties of track maintenance at 14,000 feet or worse, transporting replacement materials without roads for trucks or other maintenance equipment to access the more remote areas of track, and you’ve got one heck of a coordination puzzle to solve. “This project has become like an onion, the more layers we pull back, the more we uncover. It’s really quite complicated and we need more time to make sure that we’re doing this properly. There are a number of entities that will need to be involved in order to make this a success, and that’s a huge undertaking.”