50th Anniversary of the last South Park trains with Bob Richardson

I just purchased Bob Richardson's autobiography, Chasing Trains.  Richardson, who co-founded the Colorado Railroad Museum, has a number of C&S tidbits that I didn't know about.  Below is one of them.

The modelers at Boulder, Colorado, who maintained Engine 74 in the city park there, loaned us the so-called "bear-trap" cinder catcher they had built from Colorado & Southern patterns for that 2-8-0.  

Photo Source: Heritage Rail Alliance

So, in April of 1987, on the occasion of the final-runs anniversary on the South Park line, we operated No. 346 with our single ex-C&S stock car and the little four-wheel C&S way-car (caboose).  

Author's photo: 1991

It made an unusual and authentic 50th anniversary train, for in 1937, Engine 346 had been on loan to the C&S, and she handled the last livestock train on the South Park--into Jefferson.  The engine has a steel cab instead of the original wooden one, a result of a wreck on the C&S at Kenosha Pass in 1936.  

After the last stock train in 1937, there was a mix-up, and the crew put No. 346 into the Como roundhouse and dumped the fire.  Then, the crew got an automobile ride back to Denver.  The men were supposed to have run the 2-8-0 back to Denver, so the engine could be loaded onto a flatcar and sent back to the D&RGW.  As a result, a crew had to be taken back to Como, where No. 346 was fired up, and the men ran the engine light to Denver.