Sunday, October 15, 2017

What? The C&Sng is in Trains Magazine for the 4th time?!

Some sneaky C&S narrow gauge fan must have infiltrated the staff at Trains Magazine.  The November 2017 edition of the world's most popular train publication was the fourth one of this year to contain an article related to the oft-ignored C&S narrow gauge.  This time the focus, in "Preservation Briefs," was on the return of steam to Como.

For the first time in 79 years, steam returned to the Denver, South Park & Pacific station in Como, Colo., as privately owned 2-6-2 No. 4 operated on Aug. 19.  Wasatch Railroad Contractors in Cheyenne, Wyo., rebuilt the 1912 Baldwin-built narrow gauge ex-Klondike Mines Railway (Yukon, Canada) locomotive in time for the rural central Colorado community's 22nd annual Boreas Pass Railroad Day.  The wood 1879 Como depot was last used in 1938.  It, too, is privately owned, and the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railway Historical Society has leased the structure for the development of a South Park museum.  Nearby, a turntable has been added to the restored stone roundhouse.  The 3-foot-gauge South Park operated in the central part of Colorado west of Denver, crossing the continental divide twice on its way across Boreas Pass to Breckenridge and across Fremont Pass on the way to Leadville.  Colorado & Southern was a successor, and No. 4 carried a C&S steam whistle.

The article was accompanied by a shot of No. 4 resting next to the Como depot with a red gondola behind it.


This photos is from this Youtube video.

I realized I forgot to post that Trains also had a section on the C&S in their May 2017 magazine.  It reads as follows:

A coalition is bringing a narrow gauge steam locomotive back to tiny Como, Colo., almost 80 years after the last train left.  On Feb. 21, privately owned Klondike Mines 2-6-2 No. 4, a 1912 Baldwin, left Silver Plume, Colo., for Wasatch Railroad Contractors in Cheyenne, Wyo.  The Denver South Park & Pacific Historical Society along with History Colorado, the Como Civic Association, and DSP&P depot and hotel owners are bringing back steam in this village 75 miles southwest of Denver.  No. 4 operated in the Yukon Territory,, Canada, by Klondike Mines, was then sold to the White Pass & Yukon in 1942.  It later ran at theme parks, most recently at Dry Gulch Railroad in Oklahoma.  It was moved to the Georgetown Loop Railroad in Silver Plume in October 2015.  Volunteers plan to relay original South Park trackage abandoned by the last owner, Colorado & Southern, in 1938.  Restored to burn coal, No. 4 could arrive in Como as soon as August for Boreas Pass Days.

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