Sunday, February 9, 2020

Long Lost Footage of the Last C&S Passenger Train

"Has anyone seen that movie or knows if it still exists?"

-These words are written by Daniel W. Edwards, author of the Documentary History of the South Park Line series, and son of one of the charter members of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club, Walker S. Edwards.

His comment comes in Volume 6 after an April 10, 1937 Leadville newspaper account of the last C&S passenger train to Denver.  At the close of the piece the article's writer states "There will be many camera records of the scenes that marked the departure of the passenger train this morning.  N. M. Martin came all the way from Boston with his motion picture apparatus to file the event," after which Edwards inserts, "[Has anyone seen that movie or know if it still exists?]"

Is it possible that a small portion of that film is the following:



Of course there are a couple of reasons that this may not be specifically the film referenced in the Leadville article.  As someone noted on another post with this clip, this is likely the last passenger train on April 10, 1937 (not 1936 as mentioned in the video's title), but it likely is the train leaving Sheridan Junction.  So...
     -It's not at Leadville
     -If it's not at Leadville, unless N. M. Martin followed the train by car this must be someone else. 

Another April 1937 article from the Denver News comments that "Newsreel men...were among the 125 passengers who rode on the last trip over the famous line."

It seems that there should be lots of footage out there of this final train.  One that I have seen is on The Old Colorado & Southern and Engine No. 9 DVD with footage taken by Helen McGraw Tatum.  Does anyone know of other footage out there?

Also, does anyone know of the rest of the footage from the above video?  I've gone to stockfilm.com and they only have this 22 second clip from what I can see (and they want a LOT of money for it!).



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is for sale by The Park County Historical Society www.parkcountyhistory.com Black and White, 42 minutes, $20. I purchased a copy in 2017. Gary H Roberts Fairplay, Co garyhroberts@netscape.net