Happy Thanksgiving! A short 2019 C&S thankfulness list

In honor of Thanksgiving, I put together a small list of C&S-related items that I'm thankful for from 2019.  There are certainly more, but this is what I came up with in the few minutes before I head up to the kitchen to prep for our Thanksgiving guests today.

1. The discovery and acquisition of the only two C&S type 2 boxcars known to exist (found on a farm in western Colorado)



2. The arrival of two C&S Bettendorf freight car trucks from South Dakota that previously had been used on Type 2 stockcars



3. Every stall in the Como roundhouse (minus the office) now has track in it once again.



4. Arrival of the first diesel, a Plymouth, in Como



5. The first new DSP&P timetable in...a few years :)



6. Jason Midyette's restoration and donation of C&S boxcar 8027 to Como



7. The arrival of the first coach, RGS 256, to Como



8. A grant was received for the restoration of C&S gondola 4319 (in Como, on loan from Central City)


9. The C&S railway society's continued work on caboose 1006 in Silver Plume.



10. Two gondolas (Rio Grande) are now on display on the C&S right-of-way in Pine, Colorado (sorry, I don't have a photo of the second one)



11. Discovery of the exact sink needed for restoration of C&S caboose 1008, down to the cast lettering, at the Colorado Railroad Museum


Thank You, dear Father, for the C&S and the joy it brings to so many of us.  And thank You for all the hard work done by so many this past year!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Kurt

Video of Highlights along The Road to the West Portal

In the video below I put together highlights of the C&S route from Quartz to just before the Alpine Tunnel station complex.

Included are:
-several rock walls other than the famous ones
-three water tank locations
-a remaining telegraph pole
-the Palisades
-avalanche damage to the rock wall
-split rock
-rock work along the right-of-way
-Sherrod curve
-and more

The Last Mason Bogie - another look

We visited the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield village again in October 2019 and caught a bit of footage of the Torch Lake, the last remaining Mason Bogie in the world.  One of the docents explained that she was hidden (intentionally?) in the back of a shed behind other locos when taken out of service.  This is what allowed her to avoid being scrapped (like DSP&P 57 was scrapped) for the wartime scrap drive during WWII.

The Torch Lake was originally narrow gauge, just barely.  She was built as 4 foot 1 inch gauge, but later standard gauged.


Another bit of interesting info from the Henry Ford site:
"The last time the Torch was fired-up by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. was in 1933. Being the last of their steam locomotives and after 50 years of service, it was decided to place the Torch Lake in indefinite storage. The locomotive had to be towed on the mainline part of its journey to storage due to it not having air brakes. When the main line portion of the trip was completed, it was left on a siding at Lake Linden. The boiler was fired up and it continued under its own power. As they crossed a bridge and main highway on the way to Ahmeek, Mich., engineer Edward Carter blew a long whistle thinking this would be the last steam train whistle heard in the Keweenaw Peninsula. It was placed in a storage shed at the C & H facility in Ahmeek, drained of water and left there untouched until 1966.

"That same year the Torch Lake was pulled out of the shed and towed to Calumet, Mich., to become part of the Calumet & Hecla Centennial. The train was cleaned, painted and put on display. After the Centennial, C & H offered the locomotive to the Edison Institute (now The Henry Ford) as a gift."