An October trip to the -other- San Juans

[James McMullen]

The San Juan Mountain range of southwest Colorado that is. This is only sorta tangential to the topic of wooden boats, but I've found that there seems to be a lot of common interest in people who are interested in older things in both classic wooden yachts and classic steam locomotives. Certainly, I found that was the case when I wore my Cumbres & Toltec t-shirt at the Port Townsend wooden boat show--and when I wore my CWB t-shirt while riding the train. In both cases, people would stop me and say, "oh, hey I've been there, too."

My dad is as fanatic about steam trains as I am about boats, and ever since he retired a few years ago he has been volunteering with the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec which is an organization that preserves and restores the old structures and rolling stock of the old D&RGW narrow gauge railway. His team has just finished restoring an 1891 steam-powered railway pile driver to working order, so me, my brother Chad and his four-year-old son Finnegan went out to Colorado to visit Grandad and play on the huge train set.

These engines were some of the very last working steam in North America. This one was built in 1925, and is a hissing, steamy, greasy, magnificent beast indeed!


For us techno-geeks this is a Baldwin built, K-36 class outside frame 2-8-2, with steam superheater tubes, Walschaerts valve gear, and 36,000 lbs of tractive effort.

Finnegan was careful to dress appropriately. You have to be on the lookout for soot and cinders, after all. . . .



. . .and it paid off very handsomely! The engineer and fireman saw that Finn was all suited up in the right uniform, so he was invited to sit in the right-hand seat of a live steam locomotive for a bit! (They wouldn't let him drive though. "Not 'till you're eighteen, sonny!")



The trip up and over the pass from Antonito CO to Chama NM was every bit as gloriously scenic as you might expect. This is a "narrow gauge" railway, with the rails spaced only 36" apart rather than the common standard gauge of 4'-8 1/2". This narrow track and the antique suspensions of the railcars made for some fairly stormy seas, actually. You pretty much wanted to keep ahold of something when you stood up.

[James McMullen]

The next day, we "chased" instead of riding the train in the opposite direction. The grade going up to the pass from Chama is very steep for a railroad--4%, and the track zigs and zags across the modern highway roadbed several times. You can jump in your car and zoom up to each crossing ahead of the train and stage yourself to watch it go chugging past. This day we had a special treat, a double-header. They had enough riders scheduled for this day that they needed two locomotives to pull it up the hill. Of course, they blasted their steam whistles for each grade crossing, and also to coordinate throttle settings and such between the two locomotive engineers, a very unique and haunting sound compared to the modern air horns on diesels.



Afterwards, we toured the roundhouse shop. Check out the size of this lathe, used to turn out irregularities and flat spots on entire driver wheel and axle assemblies. (They also had several examples of disassembled locomotive lying around waiting to be restored, but unfortunately my pictures turned out to be just too dark to be worth showing them.)



Our next stop was to go ride the Durango & Silverton Railway which is the other big section of narrow gauge track that was preserved. (They used to connect as all part of the same railway, but it was mostly abandoned and scrapped in the 50's and 60's.) The D&S was built to service the gold and silver mines, and they built this railroad through a virtually impassable canyon in an area that otherwise remains roadless to this day.



That flash of golden yellow is a Quaking Aspen tree, and I learned their latin binomial which is very fun to say: Populus tremuloides.

[James McMullen]

Steam locomotives are pretty cool indeed, a curious mixture of brute force and graceful but complicated motions. Here is a closeup of a Walschaerts valve gear which controls the timing of the admission of steam to the cylinders. It twists and rocks back and forth slightly out of sequence with everything else that rolls and reciprocates in a mesmerising and hypnotic pattern.



Finally, we went up to the Railroad Museum in Golden Colorado where they were ready to fire up the steam pile driver OB and drive the first pile in over 50 years. OB doesn't have its own boiler, instead it takes steam from the helper locomotive assigned to it. The Railroad Museum just so happened to have an operational 3-foot gauge C-19 2-8-0 Consolidation on hand on this snowy day, so we hooked it all up and started pounding away! I got to be unskilled labor, assisting with hooking up shackles and carrying ties and piles here and there. The whole thing shakes and squeals and lurches and belches steam--but it also smacked that telephone pole sized stick about 12-18" into the ground with each hit. What a delight!



The clutch engaging mechanism on the steam winch is a pair of nesting cones of carefully fitted chunks of white oak that are driven together by a lever and sheer muscle power. It squeals a bit, but works surprisingly effectively.




So now, of course, I'm hopelessly addicted, and Chad and Finnegan and myself are now hard at work building a model train layout in my garage. Here's how far we've gotten so far with the basic benchwork in place:

[reddog]

James, very cool indeed. I'm really envious. What is the length of the rail line this runs on? I have taken the Royal Hudson from Vancouver to Squamish and that was a treat. This looks fantastic! Great pics.

Earl

[James McMullen]

The C&TSRR goes 64 miles. The D&SNG goes 45 miles. They're both spectacular trips.

[Paul Girouard]

Steam train up by Bow Hill will be running soon , you might be interested in that? It does have a Christmas theme of some sort , at least it only runs during the holiday season , so that might "put you off" of being interested.

The sheet-rock taper on the job mentioned it the other day , he's involved in some way with running the train.

[James McMullen]

Holidays only? Why would that put me off from being interested?
I can't imagine that there's enough local support to do it all the time.

[G. Schollmeier]

It’s nice to see the Durango & Silverton Railway is still at it. I rode it back in the 70’s. The view made a guy pucker up on some of the bends. Thanks for dredging up those memories.

[Paul Girouard]

Holidays only?

Thats what Brian told me , it runs only for the holidays, last year that early snow shut them down entirely.

Why would that put me off from being interested?

You've indicated a aversion to all things "religious" and a Christmas train might fit into your "aversion".

Thats the best written explanation I can come up with. I thought it would be a good thing to mention , instead of having to read your "bitching" about the train being tied to Christmas , keeping in mind the first part of Christmas sort of involves a Hebrew who you may not hold much, or any merit in.


I can't imagine that there's enough local support to do it all the time.

More than likely you are right about that. Much like the small train in Anacortes , once the guy who started it up died , or gave up running it ,(((( I'm not positive he's dead but pretty sure that is the case. I'd hate to call some one dead before thier time ))

But the city declined to get involved so it just went away some years ago. Before you moved there I'd guess. 10 or so ( again a guess) years ago it stopped running. The one in Anacortes.

[AJZimm]

Great trip James!

Thanks for sharing.

[TimH]

C.W. McCall has a song about the Silverton.

The San Juan he talks about must be the same.

http://s0.ilike.com/play#C.W.+McCall...8f9aa661163cbb


She was born one mornin' on a Sun Juan summer back in 18-an'-80-an'-1
She was a beautiful daughter of the D & RG and she weighed about a thousand ton
Well it's a 45 mile thru the Animas Canyon so they set her on the narrow-guage
She drunk a whole lotta water and she ate a lotta coal
And they called her the Silverton (Silverton Train)
(Here comes the Silverton up from Durango
Here come the Silverton a shovelin' coal
Here comes the Silverton up from the canyon
See the smoke and hear the whistle blow)

Well now listen to the whistle in the rockwood cut on the high line to Silverton Town
And you're gonna get a shiver when you check out the river
Which is four hundred feet straight down
Take on some water and the Needleton tank and then I struggle up a two-five grade
And by the time you get your hide past the snowshed slide
You've had a ride on the Silverton (Silverton Train)
(Here comes the Silverton...
[ strings ]
(Here comes the Silverton...

Now down by the station early in the mornin' there's a whole lotta people in line
And they all got a ticket on the train to yesterday and it's a gonna leave on time
Well it's a 45 mile thru the Animas Canyon so they set her on the narrow-guage
She takes a whole lotta water and she ate a lotta coal
And they called her the Silverton (Silverton Train)
(Here comes the Silverton...
(Here comes the Silverton...

[ShagRock]

Great photos and a lovely trip, James! I really enjoy it when people take time to post interesting stuff about their local areas..great way to appreciate different surroundings. This brought back some memories, as the first 'long trip' away from my fishing village as a kid was on train. Glad that Finnegan got to enjoy the 'high perch'..great views from there!