DURANGO, COLORADO 2015
Durango, Colorado 2015 Su and I recently returned from one of the most memorable and exciting trips we've had in a long time. We went to Durango, in Colorado, and rode the old steam train up to Silverton. I was very lucky, as I got to ride on the footplate with the crew. I have always loved steam engines, ever since I was a child. I remember that my parents lived in a house that was only about two hundred yards from the nearest station, Acocks Green in Birmingham, England. As a small boy, aged around eight to ten years old, I became an avid train spotter, a real anorak, whose idea of heaven was to spend a week at Crewe Railway Station, where the LMS railway (London Midlands and Scottish) crossed over the GWR railway (Great Western Railway). By the time I was eleven, I had spotted nearly all the Kings and Castles of the GWR. In my first year at work, as an office boy, aged Page 1
fourteen, I would travel by steam train from Acocks Green Railway Station, to Snow Hill in Birmingham, every weekday. I remember watching a fireman in a cab turning his spade over, cracking two eggs on the back of the blade and putting the blade into the firebox, where the eggs cooked very quickly! When Su asked me one day what I would like to do, I told her that I should like to travel in the cab of a steam train. Su promptly got to work on her computer and was soon showing me the website of the Durango to Silverton narrow gauge line in Colorado. This sounded fun, so she booked the flights and hotel (the old Strater Hotel on Main Street, Durango) and also a trip on the steam train, with me going in the cab. We arrived in Durango on Monday afternoon and took a cab to the hotel, built in 1881, where we had a spacious room on the fourth floor. The hotel also had the Diamond Belle Saloon next door, which held gunfights at 7.0 p.m. daily (good beer served there too!) The hotel restaurant, the Mahogany Grill served delicious food. Up early on Tuesday and we walked the two and a half blocks to the station. One of the conditions of riding in the cab is that you must dress the part, in bib overalls and a neckerchief, plus strong boots. When I arrived at the station and climbed up onto the footplate, I understood why. It's dirty up there! Coal dust and soot covered nearly everything. I was introduced Page 2
to Bill the engineer and Mick the fireman, who showed me where to stand, right behind Bill s seat, hanging onto a convenient hand hold. Mick needed most of the footplate in order to shovel coal from the tender into the gaping maws of the firebox. When I asked him how much coal the engine used, he told me that he would shovel five and a half tons in the forty-two miles to Silverton, because it was such a steep incline up the side of the mountain. The engine, by the way, was a 2-8-2 Mikado Locomotive, number 482, built in 1924 at the Baldwin Works in Pennsylvania. The Durango to Silverton Company has five of them, in full working order. Obviously, they ve been rebuilt several times, as Mick told me that that was done: About every fifteen years, whether they need it or not. The rails were laid over the winter of 1881 and I marveled at the speed with which they were laid, as most of the track had been laid upon a bed blasted out of the steep rock face with black powder. At 8 a.m. promptly, Bill pulled the whistle cord and we were off. Su was in the Cinco Animas Presidential carriage at the rear of the rear of the train, with an outside viewing platform at the end of the carriage, from which she could watch the steeply wooded hillside, which ran down to the foam flecked Animas River, pass by. The first thing that surprised me about the engine was the ride. Very stiff and unyielding! The Page 3
engine bucked and rolled along, even at under the maximum speed of 20 mph, all down, I was told by Mick, to the use of the narrow gauge, which had been modeled upon the Festinniog railway in Wales. Then there was the noise Up close in the open cab, the blast from the exhausted steam and smoke leaving the chimney was very loud indeed and when that steam whistle sounded, some three to four feet ahead of us, oh boy, did that make your ears ring! But here I was, riding on a real old American steam locomotive, one of the very few people on earth to have had that privilege. Mick was soon into action, sweeping coal in a steady arc from the tender, through the open firebox doors, which he opened via a foot-operated lever. He explained to me that he tried to keep the coal in an even spread across the firebox, in order to keep the fire burning efficiently. When I asked him how long it took to get steam up in the boiler, preparatory to the engine moving, he told me it took four and a half hours. In consequence, the company never let the fires go out overnight, so that the train was always ready to go the next morning. The heat when Mick opened the firebox doors was intense, some 1700 degrees, I believe. Mick also told me that in the winter, they could close off the open back and sides of the cab with heavy leather curtains, which would keep the heat in for the comfort of the crew. As well as shoveling coal, Mick s other job was to see, via two sight glasses in the cab, that the boiler Page 4
was always full of water. If those sight glasses empty, he told me, the boiler blows! The main gauge in the cab was the steam pressure gauge and Mick kept the pressure at between 178 and 195 psi. The safety valve would blow at 196 psi. Three other gauges ahead of Bill told him about the pressure in the Westinghouse brake system. Meanwhile, Bill was driving the train. He was controlling the regulator, which let steam into the cylinders, whilst simultaneously adjusting the throttle and operating another lever, which squirted sand in front of the driving wheels, to give them more grip on the climb from 7,000 feet up to Silverton at 13,000 feet. In between, Bill operated various cocks and levers in the cab and I soon came to realize that there was never a moment when either Bill or Mick could relax, they were always doing something to control the operation of the engine. Boy, those old time steam engine guys earned their wages! We stopped twice to refill the tender with water, Mick scrambling onto the top of the tender and guiding the hose from the trackside reservoir carefully into its entry hole. Did I tell you that the tender contained 5,000 gallons of water? No? So that s 5.5 tons of coal and 15,000 gallons of water to propel an engine and tender weighing 140 tons, plus ten carriages up a steep ascent for about 42 miles. Economy? What? Three and a half hours passed very quickly indeed as we made our way through the magnificent San Juan National Forest. We Page 5
stopped twice to let hitch hikers off the train, Mick explaining that they would pick them up later in the day on the way back. Sometimes, the rock face that had been blasted out of the rocks on either side would pass by within eighteen inches. Best to keep your head and hands inside the cab and carriages! Mind you, from where I was standing, if I took a look down to my immediate right, I was looking at the ground passing by some three to four feet straight down! And then we were pulling into Silverton. As it s name implies, Silverton was a small town set up to serve as a base for the local silver miners. Before 1881, when the railroad was laid, it had taken a stagecoach two days to go from Durango to Silverton, but once the railroad arrived, that put the old stagecoach out of business very quickly indeed. Bill and Mick asked me if I had enjoyed the trip and I could only reply Brilliant!, which seemed to please them both. Silverton is a real old Wild West town, with wooden boardwalks outside the shops and bars and the old dirt road outside was running with mud when we arrived, as it was raining. We quickly found a restaurant to eat in, which turned out great chili. Then Su and I explored the town as we had two hours before our return journey. Several of the shops had some very interesting books about how life in Silverton in the nineteenth century had been, including at least three books on the prostitution that had carried on there! Su and I climbed back onto the train, this time into Page 6
an open sided, glass-roofed carriage and the journey back to Durango began. We crossed the river three times on old trestle bridges and marveled at the beauty of the Rockies, which I had been too busy to take much notice of on the way up. The fast flowing Animas River was our constant companion, on one side of the train, or the other. Prairie dogs stood beside their burrows to watch the train as it passed by and once we saw two deer only about thirty feet from the train. All too soon we were pulling into Durango station and it was time to get off and get back to the hotel bar for a well-earned beer. If you re contemplating a trip to go see the old Wild West, I heartily recommend taking the Durango and Silverton Railroad. Site Contents John Starkey 2015 Page 7
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