Special POTD: Big Boy's Last Sherman Hill September

Just north of the border of Colorado near US-85, about equidistant between the outskirts of Cheyenne and the state line is Speer, Wyoming. Like most railroad places, it's just a spot on the map, a waypoint between here and there. In this case Speer is the junction where the north-south route of the old Denver Pacific connects with the main east-west Union Pacific Overland Route over Sherman Hill. This past week, 56 years ago, a Union Pacific Big Boy rolled westbound from Speer toward Sherman Hill with its manifest freight, and Dave Straight was there to photograph it.

Photo of the Day: Dave Straight, contributing photographer to Colorado Railroads

Another September would never come for most of the Big Boys to haul freight. Just 10 months and 2 weeks to the day after this photo was taken, the same 4015 would make the last revenue run for any Big Boy over these same rails before being retired and eventually scrapped. Only 8 Big Boys were spared, including 4005 sitting at Forney in Denver and the celebrated 4014 undergoing restoration (as this is written) in Cheyenne, just a cinder's glide from where this was taken.

Special thanks to Dave Straight (and John Hill) for sharing this finely aged photograph with us.◊

Mike Armstrong's Steam Galore Annotated For Colorado Railroad Fans

Mike Armstrong is a photographer and videographer, posting on YouTube as CoasterFan2105. His body of work has grown quite a bit. So, as a showcase, Mr. Armstrong has put together a compilation of his steam videos and called it Steam Trains Galore! At the time of this writing, it has over 2.1 Million views. (You read that correctly.)

For 2 million pairs of eyes, the video is chock full of Colorado narrow gauge action (and a bit of RGSR's standard gauge engine 18). Thus, I've produced a small collection of notes detailing the different segments with links so you can skip to the parts that interest you. Honestly, my first impulse is to just let it run and see if you can identify the segments yourself. Just in case, however, I put the cheat sheet below.




Note: clicking the time links below will open the video in a second window (after an ad, which I have no control over, unfortunately)

• 0:01 - 0:12 Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR (D&SNG) Eureka & Palisade engine 4 "Eureka" crossing Animas  River south of Silverton
• 3:03 - 5:46 Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) engine  315, which was restored by Durango Railroad Historical  Society, at work pulling various specials on the D&SNG.
• 8:13 - 11:43 C&TS and Mudhen 463
  • 8:13 D&RGW 463, one of two surviving "Mudhens,"  leads a double-header on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR  (C&TS) along with D&RGW 487 on a mixed photo freight  over the 63 mile line.
  • 8:43 passing the tank at Lava
  • 9:06 entering the bottom of Tanglefoot Curve below  Cumbres Pass
  • 10:38 exiting the top of Tanglefoot Curve immediately above the entrance
  • 11:08 decending the 4%  grade toward Chama, NM (love the through-truss shot!)
• 11:44 - 12:03 D&RGW mikado 484 on the C&TS rounding the  balloon loop at Antonito, turning the train for the  return trip to Chama.
• 15:38 Intro photo of San Luis & Rio Grande SL&RG railroad  standard gauge engine (former LS&I) 18 descending  towards La Veta, CO with a consist for SL&RG's passenger arm the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad (RGSR)
• 15:48 - 17:50 SL&RG 18 eastbound from Alamosa across the  San Luis Valley then climbing the grade toward La Veta  Pass and topping the grade at Fir, CO. Finally,  descending the east side of the pass nearing La Veta, CO
• 17:51 - 19:57 SL&RG 18 returns with the same consist  climbing dramatically back over La Veta Pass to Alamosa.  Notice the wheel slip by locomotive 18 starting at  19:10. Don't get stingy with the sand now!
• 20:03 - 22:05 Eureka & Palisade number 4 idles for water  at Hermosa then departs northbound for Silverton.  (several beautiful shots)
• 22:06 - 22:10 Photo of the west side of Durango's Narrow Gauge Avenue (yes, technically a street)

Of course, Mike has put together a sequel called--what else?--Steam Trains Galore 2! It contains more of Colorado's railroads and engines for you to discover.

Great videos, Mike!◊

TECO Train Show This Weekend in Colorado Springs

In the better-late-than-never department this week, we have the Pikes Peak region TECO Train Show. According to the press release, the show is three days this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tickets are $5 a person, or $8 for a family.

Here are the full details

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TECO – Train Expo COlorado

3 day September show

• Friday the 12th evening show 4:30 – 7:30 PM
• Saturday the 13th 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM 
• Sunday the 14th 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM 

100 Collector/vendor tables, exhibits, clinics, and 600 linear feet of running trains in 6 operating layouts

Continuing our lecture series, there will be special presentations on

• Colorado Trains, Yard Limits by Tom Van Wormer
  • Friday at 5:30 PM
  • Saturday at 12:30 PM
  • Sunday at 12:30 PM
• The Joint Line by Allan Clark
  • Saturday at 11:30 AM
  • Sunday at 11:30 AM
• The Joint Line by Mel McFarland
  • Saturday at 1:30 PM
  • Sunday at 1:30 PM

TECO Shows are geared to accommodate model railroaders from novice to master modeler and to the general public's enjoyment. This is a great family outing event!

Young people ages 6 to 80 can actually operate a model train

www.tecoshow.org

The TECO show is located at the

Freedom Financial Services Expo Center
3650 N Nevada
Colorado Springs CO 80907

Door prizes held hourly! Come and enjoy a fun afternoon at the train show in a nice comfortable 30,000 square foot hall of train exhibits, layouts, vendors and presentations.

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Here's a map to the show
Sounds like a great time! You never know what you'll find at these shows!◊

Slow Man Working

Hi folks! If you're having trouble reading this, or if the site looks out of the ordinary, I'm working to bring you a better, more functional site. Thanks for your patience.◊

POTD: Summer Fun Via the Summer Ski Train

The Ski Train, that wonderful but lost Denver institution, once ferried Denverites and not just a few tourists to the mountains of Winter Park every winter for a day of skiing. It also ran during the summer, giving harried and heated residents some nature and natural air conditioning by ascending to the high country where the air is always a bit cooler. Sadly, in 2009, it all ended.* Nonetheless, in the waning years, the F40 engines and a matched consist made for a beautiful and glorious sight!

Photo of the Day: Mike Danneman

If the trees in the background look familiar, they should because yesterday's photo of the day was shot at nearly the same location. The Ski Train is pointing east toward the still rising sun while westbound toward the Moffat Tunnel and Winter Park on July 31, 2004, just 10 years ago. The brilliance of the Ski Train's aspen gold and silver looks just as fine as ever it did on the Rio Grande F7s and F9s. "In a few moments," Mr. Danneman says, "it will be traveling through Clay on the upper track at the top of the photo." You may need to click the photo to view it full size to discern the grade.

POTD - Morning Rays Make Magic Even More Rare On UP Westbound

The rising sun is one of the best ways to color your photographs. During maybe a  half-hour at most, the sun shining through more of the atmosphere than any other part of the day as a natural filter, bathing everything in a golden, almost fiery glow. This is especially true on the Front Range because mountain shadows make evening shots with that natural glow next to impossible.

Photo of the Day: Mike Danneman

Trains magazine Sept 2014

Mike Danneman is no stranger to POTD. Also his brother Tom Danneman had a single-photo, double-page spread on pages 36 and 37 (sample at right) in September's Trains magazine. So you might say it runs in his blood. His consistently good work has him sitting near rock star-status (if there is such a thing in the railroad photography world). Why are rock stars famous? Because they take something that is difficult and make it look easy. Today's Photo of the Day is a perfect example.

The Union Pacific sends its track inspection car over the Rio Grande's Moffat Route from Denver. Fair enough, except that the Moffat is west of Denver, putting the locomotives and the train heading west in the morning in their own shadows. But Mr. Danneman has shot the Moffat often enough to know that, in a quest for altitude, the track layers of over a century ago reversed direction to run the rail around the tongue of a mesa. This reversal is now called Little Ten Curve and Big Ten Curves, ten referring to their curvature. In that one spot, the westbound train would be facing geographic east. Be there at the right time and the rays of the sun will bathe the yellow train in a golden glow! Mike met the train in that 30 minute window and we see the magic results. 

He makes it look easy.◊

POTD - Late Summer Glory Days

The summer sun is quickly fleeting away for 2014. Have you made it out to catch a few trains at work? Me neither. ☹ All is not lost, however. Labor Day weekend is fast approaching and that means that a lot of us have a few extra hours to slip away and photograph something that will last a lot longer than what most of us do for work. No one dies wishing they'd spent more hours working.

For inspiration, I offer a few POTDs for your consideration!

Photo of the Day: David Sheppard

David Sheppard captured this bronzed bunch of Union Pacific locomotives led by 5711, traveling with a full load of coal southbound at Greenland, Colorado on the morning of August 20th, 2014. It's a common sight on the Front Range south of Denver, but does that make it any less glorious?◊

V&S Scrapping Towner Line Without Approval?

You may remember a post and a follow-up in late 2011 about the state trying to save the "Towner line" from being carved up by its erstwhile benefactor V&S Railway. Yesterday, Nathan Holmes of DRGW.net has posted news* and photographs showing recent activity, all of them destructive or foreboding to the former Missouri Pacific main line that once connected Pueblo and Denver with Kansas City and St. Louis.

Mr. Holmes was also out there in July covering a series of washouts that occurred July 15, when he also took a sharp picture of Union Pacific's sharp-looking heritage unit only a few miles from its former home rails. The MoPac as it is known is far from forgotten, with an historical society and an employee association and quite a few fans. Along with the Rio Grande and Western Pacific, the Towner line served to connect Gould's railroads to threaten the Union Pacific and all other transcon routes.

There is, DRGW.net says, at least one offer in front of the Federal Surface Transporation Board to buy the line outright. The worrisome sightings by Holmes and others interested in this line are indicative that V&S intends to scrap the line outright, regardless of its legal obligations. Why else place the scrapping equipment in key areas? It's like finding a circular saw and saw horses along a fence a neighbor wants to remove from your common property line. What are they planning? Wouldn't you ask your neighbor about his intentions?

One final bit of thought, and it is directed at those who might file Towner Line under "so what?" Once rights-of-way are gone, they are next to impossible to recreate or recover. If Pueblo wants east-west passenger service, Towner would be much easier to keep than to buy space on BNSF.

A message sent to V&S seeking a statement about the Towner Line via their site has yet to be returned.◊

* -  No direct link provided. If not visible, click here to search DRGW.net for the latest news regarding the Towner line

Union Pacific Railroad honored Missouri Pacific in 2006 with a heritage unit. Today, the transcon link is being chipped away by those who would sell Colorado short.
Photo: terry cantrell via Wikimedia Commons

Jim Wrinn: Ten Myths About Visiting the Colorado Narrow Gauge

Jim Wrinn is the Editor of Trains magazine, and a consummate professional. He's also a very big fan of Colorado's Narrow Gauge. He recently blogged about it on Train of Thought, the magazine's very active blog. It's called 10 Myths About Visiting the Colorado Narrow Gauge. Here's a sample, with the myth stated first in "double italics" and the response in italics.

4. You should ride the C&TS from Antonito. Wrong. You can ride out of Antonito, but if you really want to experience a hard working locomotive on a 4 percent grade, schedule your trip starting in Chama so you can truly experience the drama of a train on Cumbres Pass.

How often have I seen Antonito like this in the
morning? More often than Chama for certain!
Photo: John Hill, contributing photographer

Jim, while I enjoyed the whole post, I want to disprove this particular myth so much that it is on my bucket list! I've always ridden the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic from Antonito, Colorado and never from Chama. Last year, I promised myself that the next time I ride, it's going to be behind a Rio Grande 2-8-2 barking steam and coal smoke out it's stack as it climbs into Colorado over Cumbres Pass and idles down Tanglefoot Curve. My very first time seeing the narrow gauge C&TS was watching a train come down through that beautiful little bit of engineering. It's going to be special!

8. They’re not worth visiting except in September when the Aspens turn yellow. Not true. You’ll see great scenery any time of the year. Yes, the Aspens are spectacular with their translucent yellow leaves, but anytime is a good time to enjoy the narrow gauge.

Anytime, indeed! While aspen gold makes a beautiful contrast with the evergreens and the darker-blue-than-at-sea-level sky, it's not the only color that Colorado has to show. The subtle shades of spring and summer, the regal robes of winter in Cascade Canyon and all over Pikes Peak for most of the year.* Think of your own home or neighborhood or park. Is fall when it's the most beautiful? Maybe. Do other seasons give autumn a run for the money? Most likely!

There's more, lots more. Wrinn writes only what a veteran of riding all the Colorado Narrow Gauge Railroads knows. He finds himself in good company, as his closing quote of David P. Morgan proves.◊

Narrow (gauge) Minded Folks

• Jim's Post on Train of Thought
• The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad
• The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
• The Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden
• The Georgetown Loop Railroad in Georgetown west of Denver

More Narrow Gauge Folks

• Ridgway Railroad Museum - for the Rio Grande Southern
• Galloping Goose Historical Society - home of RGS Goose 5
• Narrow Gauge Circle - one of the first and best
• John West's NarrowGaugeMemories.com - Rio Grande 

* - Ok, the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway is not narrow gauge, but it is a cog railway, which is as much different from standard gauge as narrow is. Just look at how the switches are run.

Colorado Railfan: First Look at Union Station

Longtime web photographer and near-permanent fixture on CR, Kevin Morgan of ColoradoRailfan.com visited Union Station and the Moffat Tunnel with his apprentice railfan photographers on Sunday. They explored the outcome of the Union Station Project, a project that broke ground 4 years ago and officially wrapped up just last month.

The new waiting room fuses much of its past elegance with modern touches. The chandeliers are a big improvement over the unbelievably ugly Carter-era fluorescents.
Photo: Kevin Morgan, ColoradoRailfan.com 

The DUSPA project's main effort was to enhance the station with the goal of tying all of the FasTracks projects to one central transportation nexus. Once FasTracks wraps up, it should allow a person to ride from any Light Rail or commuter rail (like from DIA) to any other point on RTD's rail or express bus service using the station as a hub. The connections are made between the train platforms, the light rail platform further out from the station and the underground bus terminal.

Union Station survives intact (more or less) with 6 train platforms, light rail and bus terminal, ready to connect another century of passengers, near and far.
Photo: Kevin Morgan, ColoradoRailfan.com

Now that the remodel of Denver Union Station is complete, one could wonder at the possibilities of intercity transit along the Front Range and possibly the I-70 corridor. Doing so could level out some of Denver's pricey real estate and extend the effective range of any working family within 20 miles of I-25 while reducing the impact on traveler and environment. Surely, Union Station is now up to the challenge.

Be sure to check out the rest of Kevin's photos from the day, including a primarily-EMD powered manifest at Plain harkening back to the days of the Rio Grande!◊

Blue Flags Save Lives

Photo: HemiAdda2d

Thanks for your patience. There is a reason CR has sat idle for the last few weeks. In railroading, a locomotive or track that is blue flagged may not be moved or moved upon for any reason for the protection of workmen who are often under or between cars. In other words, blue flags mean that someone may be injured or killed if the equipment or connected cars are moved. Violation of a blue flag will often result in a suspension or a Trump-like dismissal. It may sound draconian, but rules are often written after someone has died for want of a common sense protection found in such rules. A clear, layman's explanation can be found in Blue Flags, an article by Charles H. Bogart, published by Trains magazine.

Ed: Regular readers of CR may wish to read further.

In May, I found myself in the position where I decided to blue flag Colorado Railroads. If I hadn't relieved myself of this responsibility (yes, it's not just a joy), I would have had a hard time balancing needs. The consequences wouldn't have been life and limb, but since I tend to sacrifice the important for the sake of the urgent on occasion, I wanted to avoid the hazard altogether because it was one of those situations where those kinds of mistakes are amplified.

Photo: Roger Durfee

At that time, someone in my extended family learned they had a terminal illness. Days ago, that person took their last breath. This person was a great encouragement to me and always showed support and kindness in everything they've said or done for me and my wife and kids. The last 5 weeks in particular have been tough because nature of the illness robbed us of communication with each other.

Now that this person has crossed into eternal life with Jesus, the wounding is complete and the healing can begin in me and mine. I appreciate your thoughts and prayers for my family as we set about finding "the new normal" for us and resume what we can when we can. For now, the blue flag is about to come off the blog and we can resume the wonder that is Colorado Railroads together!◊

POTD: Putting A Bow On A Colorful Week

BNSF 5391, a GE Dash 9-44CW struggles up the grade toward Palmer Lake with only one of her two teammates pulling along. Something tells me its not the brand new powerbar in the back! Additional color enhancements by God.
Photo: Joe Blackwell

Photographer Joe Blackwell has gone 3 for 3 in POTD the latter half of this week, although it wasn't by coincidence. BNSF and rare colors have been the theme and Joe seems to capture a great deal of it near his home in Palmer Lake. When he first retired, one of his first shots in July 2009 was of a BNSF train   struggling to make the summit of the Palmer Lake Divide separating the Arkansas and Platte River drainages. Neither BNSF pumpkins nor rainbows are unusual colors to Colorado, however. Yet just behind the lead engine is a CSX locomotive, just like Monday when another struggling BNSF train was led by the Central of Georgia NS heritage unit with a CSX engine in the second spot. One could say I put a bow on the entire package with this shot, but it wasn't planned. I wish I was that good.◊