Trip report - A quick tour of Colorado

We just got back from a short vacation in Colorado. What is a railfan to do when surrounded by some of the best known narrow gauge railroading in North America? He goes to the museums and rides the trains, of course. On this trip, we visited the Colorado Railroad Museum, and rode Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway and the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Here's a little bit of a photojournal documenting the trip (39 photos, dialup users beware)...

Colorado Railroad Museum

Our first stop was the Colorado Railroad Museum. One of the first items in the museum that caught my eye was this monument. No, it's not a replica, this is the original monument erected by the Rio Grande Railroad to commemorate the design of the first dome car.

The monument was originally located in Glenwood Canyon, and can be seen there in photos from before the construction of Interstate 70. The Denver Public Library has a photo of the monument by Otto Perry from before the construction (yes, it's the other side of the monument).

The dome car is said to have been invented by an executive for EMD who was riding through the Rockies aboard one of the company's then common F units, very similar to this F9 pair across the museum grounds.


Just below the F9s is the museum's roundhouse. It's not just for show; with the working "armstrong" turntable, the museum's restoration and operating equipment maintenance efforts are carried out here. We arrived in time to watch two of the museum's staff do some switching on the turntable.


They used the little shop switcher to pull the passenger car out of the first stall and put it on another track, then they moved the open excursion car into the recently emptied roundhouse stall. Did you notice that the track under the switcher has four rails? The turntable bridge does too. The two inner rails are gauged at 3' to handle the museum's narrow gauge equipment, while the two outer rails are 4' 8.5" for the standard gauge equipment. This type of rail configuration was common when multiple gauges had to be accommodated in the same roundhouse. By laying the two gauges using the same track centerline, they could ensure that the rails would always line up correctly for either gauge when equipment was turned around.

One of the other turntable tracks included this interesting piece of equipment. Take a close look at the couplers on this one.

Yes, there are two couplers at each end. This is a short standard gauge flat car that is designed to work as a conversion car between standard gauge and narrow gauge equipment. The Rio Grande Railroad used these on the dual gauge track between Alamosa and Antonito, where narrow gauge locomotives would pull strings of standard gauge freight cars on transfer runs between the two towns. They used locomotives like this one on these trains.


I wandered around the museum to take a few artsy-fartsy shots of the equipment, like this one...


and this one...


It seems like every railroad museum that I visit these days has a GP30 somewhere on the property. Well, CRM was no exception as this former DRGW locomotive was behind the roundhouse.


But, this is the only museum I've been to where the GP30 was coupled to a Galloping Goose. Goose number 6 shared the same turntable track next to a Baldwin steam locomotive built in 1880 (no, there really wasn't room enough for me to back up further on this shot).


The museum also had Galloping Goose number 2 and 7 on other turntable tracks undergoing restoration. Hopefully, the next time we visit, we'll be able to ride one of them around the museum's loop.

In looking around, I soon found that I wasn't alone in wandering the railroad's back property. This little guy showed up a couple times. I guess he wanted to be seen, because he stopped and posed for me a couple times. I call him "The CRM Bunny."

Pike's Peak Cog Railway

The next morning, we stopped in Manitou Springs to ride the Pike's Peak Cog Railway, formerly known as the Manitou & Pike's Peak Railway.

At the depot, one of the original steam locomotives, also built by Baldwin, was on display at the bottom end of track.


We didn't get to ride in front of steam on this trip. That's not a typo. You see the big round bumper type thing where the front coupler is supposed to be? That pushes against the passenger car's bumper; the locomotive operated below the unpowered rolling stock on this railroad. Since the grade only went in one direction, the locomotives didn't need couplers. Gravity held the unpowered cars against the motive power. We rode in some Swiss built diesel-powered rail cars for this trip. Here's our train pulling into the station.


The depot is at 6,571 feet, but going up a grade that at times is as steep as 24%, it doesn't take very long to gain some real altitude. After just under 2 miles, we pass Minnehaha siding at 8,332 feet in elevation.


Another mile gone by and another siding, this one called Half-Way House. This is the former site of a "resort" hotel that was half way between the city of Manitou Springs and the summit of Pike's Peak. Today the siding held only a flat car.


Two miles later we pass Mountain View siding at 10,012 feet in elevation. The cabin at the end of the siding is built from a former M&PP passenger car; it's a common stopping point for hikers who take the path from the other side of the tracks to Barr Camp (which is about 1.5 miles north and 186 feet higher than the siding). We start to feel the cold here, and it's time to put on our coats.


A little farther along, the valley that we are climbing widens out and we are able to look back and see Colorado Springs for the first time.


About a mile and a half past Mountain View, we pass the tree line and reach Windy Point siding. The landscape is very barren here, but we are able to more easily see where the railroad right of way continues up the mountainside in front of the train (it's that diagonal line from about the middle of the right hand side of the image roughly following the edge of the visible grass).


Just a few minutes later, we are at the summit of Pike's Peak at 14,110 feet above sea level. Somewhere out there is Kansas. The temperature at the peak today is hovering right around 40 degrees fahrenheit, which is no problem for a Wisconsinite, but the lack of oxygen at this altitude puts a damper on any thoughts of exercise. Like the guide said on the way up, breathing here is its own reward.


I tried a couple artsy-fartsy shots here too, but only got one really good image off the digital camera (I haven't gotten the film developed from my other camera yet). This is not somewhere that will allow running past the buffers at the end of track.


On the way back down the mountain, we met the second train of the day at Windy Point, and then the third train at Minnehaha siding.


Finally, we arrive back at the bottom station just in time for lunch. It takes a little while to recover from the effects of the altitude, so I take a few moments to look around the station some more. The train that we rode up earlier in the day is now being readied for the next trip up the mountain, which will also be the second to last departure for the day.

Royal Gorge

Since our next ride wasn't scheduled to depart until the next morning, we took the scenic route to the Royal Gorge. We didn't have time after lunch to ride the gorge train, but we did get to see it in the station. A few of the cars in the train are full dome cars, some of which were used in Alaska and are originally of Milwaukee Road heritage.

Other cars in the train were cut away versions of former coaches. I've got to model one of these for my NTrak tourist trains.


We got to the gorge itself just before the tourist trap portion of the bridge area was about to close. That was no great loss for us since we only wanted to see the gorge and bridge and not partake in any of the festivities or attractions at the rim. We were on our way out of the parking area before we spotted the free observation area. The light's on the wrong side of the bridge for photos late in the day, but here's what we saw...


Way down at the bottom of the gorge is the Arkansas River and the former Rio Grande mainline. That's the track that the Royal Gorge train uses today. After seeing this, we drove along the river, watching the former Rio Grande mainline on the other side of the river all the way to Salida. There we turned south and headed toward Alamosa where our hotel reservation was for the night.

Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad

The highlight of the trip was the next day's ride on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. We chose to ride from Antonito to Osier and return, mostly because we didn't really want to spend time on a bus to get back to our car from Chama. The train was ready and waiting when we got to Antonito.

We had a little time before boarding the train, and it is now when I capture what I think is my favorite image from the long weekend. The fireman is ready and waiting in the engine cab.


We're soon under way and I make my way to the open car, where I will spend most of the ride getting sunburned. One of the signs on the car in front of me catches my eye...


Yes, that's the locomotive's exhaust. From Antonito to Osier is almost a constant climb, but only at a 1.24% ruling grade, so we don't need any extra assistance to get up the hill. From Chama, it's a 4% grade, and the train is double-headed. Next time we go, we'll ride that end of the line to see the twin locomotives working upgrade. This trip, we started out the day with perfect railfanning weather, but the storm clouds soon gathered.


The storms stayed off in the distance for a while, but as we gained altitude, we heard the thunder over the ridge. By the time we got to our water stop at Big Horn, we were getting drops of rain here and there.


Finally, a few minutes later, we had to flee the open car for the shelter of the coaches as the rain came down heavily enough to bother even the most hardy of the railfans. We even got pea-sized hail for a few minutes. But then the clouds parted enough that we could go back to the open car for the rest of the ride to Osier. Here we're passing the Phantom Rocks.


We passed through Mud Tunnel at the pinch point of Toltec Gorge and almost instantly could see about 600 feet down from the side of the track. The canyon was too narrow to get a complete shot from top to bottom at our angle, but here's the other side of the canyon at this point to give you an idea of its ruggedness.


We passed through Rock Tunnel and the canyon widened out again. A few minutes later, we got our first view of Osier, where we had a hot lunch waiting for us and where we would turn around for the return trip. The train from Chama has already arrived at Osier.


Looking at the route map, I saw that there was a turnaround loop at Osier, so I had expected that the engineer would back the train around the loop and we'd head back in the same orientation as we did on the way up. Nope. The Chama train's crew had already uncoupled both locomotives (it was double-headed up from Chama and one locomotive had already run around the train on the siding), and they were ready to make an engine swap at the station. They pulled their locomotive forward to couple onto what was the rear of our train and our crew did the same with our locomotive.


After lunch, I was able to look around a little and get a shot or two of our "new" locomotive, number 488. It may have been narrow gauge, but it was still big.


On the way back down the hill, I was able to get ready to photograph items that I had missed on the way up, like the Garfield monument just west of Rock Tunnel. That's US President James Garfield, not the cat. The railroad erected this monument to him after his assassination in 1881.


I also got a good shot of the shoofly around Mud Tunnel. The detour was needed after the tunnel's timbers caught fire in the late 1800s. The guides told us that passengers were expected to walk this path from their train on one side of the tunnel to another passenger train on the other side of the tunnel. Freight cars were pulled one at a time by horse on temporary track until the tunnel was repaired.


The ride back down the hill wasn't quite as eventful as the ride up, the storms stayed away from the train for the entire trip down. There was one passenger in the first class parlor car who kept leaning out the window to see the locomotive, so I finally gave up on keeping him out of all my pictures and tried to make the best of it.


All too soon, the ride is over as we pull in to Antonito. I take a quick turn through the gift shop as the majority of the train's passengers board the bus to Chama to return to their own cars. The engine crew pulls the locomotive around to the shops area where it will stay for the night next to one of Rio Grande's very few narrow gauge diesel locomotives (now owned by and lettered for the Cumbres & Toltec), and I'm able to walk around for a few final shots.


The next morning, we drove back to Denver, following what used to be called the Joint Line, shared by Santa Fe and Burlington Northern railroads. Ownership and operations over this track have been greatly simplified since the two railroads merged in 1995 to form what is now BNSF Railway. We saw a few coal trains along the route, but didn't have time to stop and photograph anything. Maybe next time.

So, that's what I did for my summer vacation.