The following is a several part series I have been working on to chronicle the history of the main C&Sng/DL&G/DSP&P equipment housed at The Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. I've tried to research how each piece found its way from its last operating days in Colorado to its arrival at the museum. I will post it in several parts. Sources, varying from books, online sources, and help from the museum itself, will be listed with or after the final segment. I would be happy to receive any information that my readers may have to adjust or correct the content.
The Railroad Riches of Golden
Stock Car 7064
Boxcar 8308*
Caboose 1009
Rotary 99201
Locomotive 191
Refrigerator car 1113
Boxcar 8310
Golden, Colorado got its name from gold found in Clear Creek, but today it holds a very different treasure: a truly impressive collection at the Colorado Railroad Museum that tells the history of the state’s railroads.
While the museum sits alongside the former Colorado & Southern dual gauge line, a portion of which exists today as a standard gauge route to the famed Molson Coors Brewery, C&S narrow gauge equipment was, for many years, elusive to acquire as most of the narrow gauge was abandoned over two decades before Robert (Bob) Richardson and Cornelius Hauck founded the Golden museum. As a result, the C&Sng equipment that now rests there all have circuitous tales of rescue that sent Bob Richardson traveling all over not only the state of Colorado but also as far away as Wisconsin and Mexico. Along with Cornelius Hauck, Bob’s determination saved the most diverse collection of original narrow gauge C&S equipment in one location in the world.
From Pacific to Atlantic
1889
FEBRUARY
COLORADO
NORTH OF CASTLETON, NEAR GUNNISON
The balloon smoke stack of Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad engine 191 belches a plume of coal smoke into the cold, winter air as the engineer slowly opens the throttle. The heat of the boiler, a burden in the summer, is welcome to the engineer and his fireman on a day like today at 17 degrees, which is somewhat moderate considering that this remote area has some of the coldest winters in the country.
The engineer feels the power of this eastbound 1880-built 2-8-0 Consolidation with 13,900 pounds of tractive effort as it begins to inch along. Behind him is a train load of 35-pound rail just torn up from a short stretch of track, a little over one mile in length, built almost to the coke ovens of the Ohio Creek Anthracite Coal Company, where coal from local mines was to be purified.
While originally a boom area for gold and silver that quickly played out, this entire region in south central Colorado, more than 200 miles over the Rockies and southwest of Denver, is a bastion of both bituminous and anthracite coal, a very unusual combination in the same locale. The promise of this coal, along with limestone and iron ore, was deemed worthy enough to have motivated the Denver, South Park & Pacific to build and operate the precarious route over the precipitous Alpine Pass and tunnel through the Continental Divide, the highest railroad bore in the world at the time.
But all is not well with the Ohio Creek Anthracite Coal Company as demonstrated by its recent bankruptcy, leading to the removal of rail on the short-lived, unballasted, and incomplete spur to the company’s coke ovens.
A burst of chuffs from the engine scares aware some nearby elk as the wheels of DSP&P 191 spin wildly for a moment trying to grip the steel rail with enough traction to pull the heavy string of rail-laden cars. With the throttle adjusted, and a bit of sand applied, the drive wheels begin to find their footing and the train ever so slightly picks up speed, the bark of the smokestack sounding across the landscape of the Gunnison valley. This seemingly mundane occurrence betrays the historic nature of the moment when the aptly named Denver, South Park & Pacific, with emphasis on the word “Pacific,” makes its first trackage-move away from its grandiose westward vision.
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From the beginning in 1872 the South Park Line’s sights were set, as so many lines at the time, on reaching the western regions of the United States. Railroad names such as Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, and Northern Pacific all echoed the siren song of the west. The Denver, South Park & Pacific was yet one more that listened to the song and, in its case, built from Denver and headed to that distant coast.
Many railroads did indeed reach that heavenly shore, but in the above 1889 vignette, DSP&P 191 took on the ignominious role of defeat, whether her crew knew it or not, as the last engine of the South Park to have traversed the westernmost point that the line’s rails would ever reach (This is conjecture, but possible, as 191 was one of two engines based out of the Gunnison roundhouse). On that day, engine 191, by hauling away those pulled rails, began the process of the South Park’s retreat, mile by mile, away from the Pacific and, a little over 50 years later, into oblivion.
Never again would the South Park Line lay rails beyond this point, though No. 191 continued its faithful service on what was, at that time, still a vast narrow gauge system. Just under a decade later, a decade which included the railroad’s bankruptcy and a short-lived name change to the Denver, Leadville, & Gunnison, the railway got absorbed in 1898 into the larger Colorado & Southern Railway, the “Pacific” then gone in both name and goal. Four years after this change and with a new number as C&S 31, the engine formerly known as No. 191, that pulled those slabs of steel off the bankrupt coal company spur back in 1889, was sold in 1902 and sent to a logging railroad, of all places, not west towards the Pacific, but three states east.
Bob Richardson
FRIDAY, SUMMER 1954
NEAR GUNNISON, COLORADO
Bob Richardson turns the silver handle and closes the split back metal doors of his “Gutbuster,” Chevrolet Carryall, a cross between a station wagon and truck, its nickname from the feeling riders experienced, on some luggage as his two young passengers jump in the car. Many hours are ahead with these two boys on the drive from Gunnison to Denver where Bob is to drop them off to the boys’ parents. The Gilmers are friends of Bob’s and he offered to ferry their sons from Gunnison where Billy, one of the two boys, spent the summer at a sheep camp on a ranch run by his uncle.
As the car pulls away and stories of sheep herding likely fill the air of conversation, many more ranches pass by their windows. Ranches dot the area near Gunnison and have long been as profitable for the area as mining. Soon, Bill changes the subject from livestock to history, having seen some abandoned coke ovens earlier in the summer. Bob and the two boys, with a long weekend available and no pressure to get them back to Denver right away, make the decision to explore the back country north of Gunnison and track down these ruins.
The thrill of adventure fills the Gutbuster’s passengers and their eyes travel out of the car’s windows to the mysteries waiting to be unraveled in the distant wilderness. While July can be hot elsewhere, it is only in the 60s this morning as the car leaves Gunnison. At over 7000 feet above sea level, the temperature rarely climbs over 80 even in the height of the summer. But despite the slightly cool air, Bob’s heart probably warms as he sees his younger self in the excitement of these two history-curious boys riding along in his Carryall.
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Bob Richardson and Billy Gilmer shared something in common: a curiosity about what once was and the desire to explore. Bob, born in Pennsylvania, later grew up in Akron, Ohio, an industrial city known for its rubber plants, one of which he later worked for, with history in his blood, collecting stamps, and catching the sights of numerous local railroads that served the ubiquitous industries in the city. Eventually, while traveling the country for work, he scoped out remote rail lines to satisfy his curiosity, but a fateful trip out west in 1941 to check out all the hubbub he had heard about the narrow gauge railroads in Colorado changed the course of his life forever.
Rail historian Gordon S. Chappell noted, “The 1941 trip had cemented [Bob’s] fascination with the Rocky Mountain narrow gauge lines. Not only did they have the attraction shared by many other short line railroads of operating locomotives and passenger cars of the 1870s and 1880s, they did so amidst spectacular scenery.” It was on this trip that Bob rode trains, snapped photos, and, most importantly, caught what some have called “the narrow gauge fever.”
His fever, in time, led to more than photographs, though. Not long after another Colorado visit in September 1948 where Bob and an Ohio friend named Carl Helfin rode their first Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursion through the Black Canyon of Gunnison, Bob and Carl made the decision to move from Ohio to Alamosa, Colorado where they built a brand new 10-unit motel, aptly named The Narrow Gauge Motel, its neon sign flanked by railroad lanterns on each side, situated near the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s dual gauge line to Antonito.
After the move, Bob’s time was often consumed with construction and then the running of the new motel venture alongside his friend and business partner Carl. Despite the busyness, Bob took what free time he could to steal away and explore the mountain railroads around him.
What he found, though, disturbed him. Not only were the mountain lines drying up, but some of the management was actively seeking to dump their narrow gauge branches. Alfred Perlman of the D&RGW, a man Bob once called nefarious, and the same man who happily pulled a coach off a train ready to leave the station so he could sell it to J.B. Schoolland for his Boulder train display, was intentionally working to drive business off the narrow gauge rails. When Bob reported this to the public in a newsletter he started, he later found out that a Rio Grande manager crumpled up the newsletter and hurled it across a room while referencing Richardson with coarse words.
In response to the vanishing narrow gauge situation, Bob began to snatch what he could from the scrap heap and flames. While some railroads seemed eager to scrap everything and even to burn all old paperwork, thankfully, others were sympathetic to Bob’s nostalgia, even if their budgets couldn’t justify keeping their lines alive. Pierpont Fuller Jr., the Rio Grande Southern Railroad’s receiver who sold ex-C&S 74 to Boulder for Schoolland’s display there, ordered the RGS general manager in Durango, who also served as auditor, to give Richardson all the records belonging to the railroad upon its abandonment, though this manager ignored the request and paid a man from Ridgway to burn them in a local trash heap. Gratefully, for a small sum, the man paid to dispose of the documents allowed Bob to get between some of the papers and the dump and cart many of the records away anyway.
The collection of records turned out to be much larger than Bob expected and he found a curious way to move it all back to the motel. He approached the dismantler of the RGS and bought three freight cars for $250 each and then proceeded to pack all the RGS documents into three of them before he paid the dismantler to truck them to Alamosa. A fourth car was purchased as well and trucked to Alamosa loaded with a baggage cart and numerous pieces of hardware the dismantler had found to be more costly to clean up than what he could earn from its salvage.
Collected railroad documents and nearly a handful of freight cars were then accompanied by items like old switch stands from the 1880s which Bob and Carl used to decorate the Alamosa motel. In a short time their collection moved to bigger and bigger items. When Bob, whose name was getting around, was on an outing to check out the remaining rail activity in Durango a man in the scrap business saw him on Main Avenue in town.
This man accosted Bob and stated emphatically, “Now, Mr. Richardson, what you need is a locomotive to go along with all that other railroad material at your motel.”
This led to his acquisition of an 1881 D&RG 2-8-0 engine, no. 346, a locomotive that was leased to the C&S in the late 1930s to pull freight on the South Park in the line’s twilight years. After also saving a Rio Grande caboose, Bob noted, in classic undertones, “Soon there was a railroad museum at the Narrow Gauge Motel.”
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