The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 7

See Part 1 here.
See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

See Part 4 here.

See Part 5 here.

See Part 6 here.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1973

GOLDEN, COLORADO

THE COLORADO RAILROAD MUSEUM

Today, seventy one years after she was shipped away from her home state, Bob witnesses DSP&P 191 arrive in Golden after her journey via standard gauge gondola and then motor truck. He is relieved the 2-8-0 made it.  Along the way from Wisconsin, the engine was briefly ‘lost’ when an ice storm caused a break in communication lines with the Santa Fe.  Thankfully, she was ‘found’ and made the rest of the journey without incident.

Despite the cool February Rocky Mountain air, it is still warmer than, as Bob will later write, the “usual zeroish winter weather” of northern Wisconsin where she was shipped from. This may give the Colorado Railroad Museum crew hope that the 191’s wheels can finally be convinced to move.

The 93-year old locomotive rests on a lowboy trailer in the museum yard, waiting for the adjacent crane, it’s tall spindly arm pointed high with cables descending around the engine, to finally reunite 191 with rails on native soil.  With only a stubby running board where a cow catcher pilot once proudly strutted forward, an elongated smokebox added from one of the logging roads where her original shorter one should be, and her original balloon smoke stack long ago replaced with a thin straight one, she lacks some of the distinctive features that would tag her as her former 1880s self, though in reality her main structure has actually changed very little since she left the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

Regardless of her look, she is a gem, the oldest native Coloradan locomotive in the state, the museum’s only South Park engine, and the most authentic DSP&P loco in existence.  It has cost more than $8000 to get No.191, along with her stiff wheels, to this spot, but finally, the cables running up to the crane’s arm, cables that seem so small compared to 191’s 56,000 pound girth, lift her in the air and then ever so gently set her down on Colorado rails.

Denver, South Park & Pacific No. 191 is home.  

But like a stubborn child, her wheels still will not move. 

The Colorado Railroad Museum’s small Plymouth diesel was called on to assist 191’s mobility issues.  The little diesel tugged and pushed, but the 2-8-0’s wheels, doused with penetrating oil, refused to rotate.  The process was continued for several weeks by a surely discouraged crew until the amount of oil used reached into the gallons.  Suddenly, one day, the Plymouth “Peewee” locomotive tugged once more and DSP&P 191’s wheels moved for the first time in four decades.

Despite the thousands of dollars spent to get her to Golden, a cost that was gratefully later diminished by the sale of the other Mexican engine and a few cars to the Huckleberry tourist railroad in Michigan, the engine that struck out its pilot north of Gunnison towards the Pacific, towards a grade that was never completed, and the same engine that was later shipped so far east had finally come to rest in the state that nearly a century ago had called for her birth.

*******

Post-Bob Richardson: One more acquisition and a prodigal returns

It was a triumph and a joy to bring No. 191 back home again in 1973, and eighteen years later Bob made the decision to also go home.  In 1991, after 33 years at the helm of the Colorado Railroad Museum, it was time for Bob to rest on his laurels and retire.  Like 191 did at the birth of the twentieth century, Bob moved east.  While he loved his Colorado narrow gauge relics, even they could not compare to being near family, and so Bob packed up his belongings and settled in Pennsylvania.  

While this tale will now take two short branch lines away from Bob Richardson’s journey, both occurred before his passing.  Two Colorado & Southern narrow gauge rolling stock stories from the post-Richardson era at CRRM bear telling.  The first relates to a car that was saved and then nearly lost by a contemporary of Richardson’s.  The second concerns a twist of fate regarding one of the C&S freight cars Bob himself saved, but later sold after the move to Golden.

The only fully intact C&S refrigerator car  

While Bob Richardson remained a bachelor his whole life, he knew how to pass on a legacy as good parents do with their children.  When he left his position and the state in 1991, the Colorado Railroad Museum that he left behind continued to flourish and save history, including more pieces of the Colorado & Southern narrow gauge.  

One very important piece of C&S rolling stock that came to Golden after Bob’s tenure arrived through a sad demise.  Unlike Bob Richardson and Cornelius Hauck, who built their museum with a vision to outlast themselves, another Coloradan who also amassed large quantities of saved narrow gauge equipment seemed to have lacked such foresight.

  Don Drawer operated a small airport in the Colorado prairie near Fort Lupton, north of Denver, but his dreams revolved more so around trains than airplanes.  In the early 1970’s he started snatching up whatever narrow gauge equipment he could find, moving it to his large property with plans to construct and operate a narrow gauge steam railroad and a fictional town where visitors could come to learn all aspects of train operation.  He named his railroad-to-be the Sundown & Southern.

By 1972, when Bob and Cornelius were just learning of their chance to acquire No. 191, Don had already amassed over 200 pieces of rolling stock, including C&S refrigerator car 1113, last used on the Rio Grande Southern.  Unlike her sister survivor C&S refrigerator 1116, acquired by Bob back in 1954 and later sold to the failed Magic Mountain resort, 1113 was not cut up and turned into an amusement park piece.  Instead, Drawer had her moved to Fort Lupton just as she was found in Ridgway, Colorado after being on display there for roughly two decades since the demise of the Rio Grande Southern, still fully intact as she was designed: an old, but authentic, narrow gauge refrigerator car.

The Bogies and the Loop

Drawer’s lack of foresight will later be evidenced, but he certainly made up for this in tenacity.  For just one example, his growing collection, that included C&S 1113, was in need of an engine and he set out to get one.  In an epic move, Don traveled to Central America in order to personally escort a steam locomotive,* business car, and caboose from the country of Guatemala to his Sundown & Southern.  On his way north, tragedy struck when the business car was ransacked by vandals and thieves while the train sat on the track overnight.  Numerous fixtures and historical features were stolen.  Don refused to let this setback stop him and he continued north with plans to restore the engine, committed to his dream because, as the Fort Collins Coloradan newspaper that reported the incident put it that year, “as a railroad nut, he loves it.”

Sadly, the fire in the boiler of Don Drawer’s determination never caught flame.  According to his son Brian, “red tape and county politics” kept his father’s dream from ever becoming reality.  Hundreds of pieces of narrow gauge equipment, in various stages of disrepair, littered his property when he died in the early 2000s, leaving pieces like C&S refrigerator car No. 1113 with an uncertain future.  

The Bogies and the Loop

While the passing of Don Drawer’s dreams and the Sundown & Southern was tragic, he saved lots of equipment that might otherwise have been lost, and when the derelict rolling stock was auctioned off in 2002, it allowed many pieces to get into more steady hands, including refrigerator car No. 1113 which was purchased by CRRM for $500.  Moved to the Museum, the only fully intact surviving C&S refrigerator car was restored in gleaming yellow paint and adorned with the lettering of the line she spent most of her life serving. 

* International Railways of Central America No. 111, later used on the Georgetown Loop

Part 8

The history of Highline Railroad Park video

Highline Railroad Park in Breckenridge, Colorado is a park dedicated to the history of the DSP&P/DL&G/C&S line over Boreas Pass.  On display are C&S engine No. 9, C&S boxcar 8323, and replica C&S caboose 1012.  Also on display are are a White Pass & Yukon rotary snowplow and a D&RGW flatcar.  This video below shows some brief history surrounding the park and some of the rolling stock on display.

When I first visited Breckenridge in the early 1990s I only saw a sign commemorating the Boreas Pass route.  I was unaware that there was a rotary snowplow on display near a cemetery.  On a return visit in the early 2000s I saw the Rotary Snowplow Park for the first time.  When I was there it was just the White Pass rotary with two C&S boxcars behind it.  Finally, in my family's 2018 trip we were able to see the full Highline Railroad Park with No. 9, the replica C&S caboose, and all the other added signage and playground details.  

I didn't get any footage of the Highline RR Park's museum building.  Sorry!

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 6

See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

See Part 4 here.

See Part 5 here.

Back home again

While a rotary had now made its appearance at the Colorado Railroad Museum, a volunteer to fetch the Mexican engines in exchange for 191 still had not.  This was the first of many mishaps along the journey to get No. 191 back home to Colorado.  Months drifted by with no bites on the volunteer line when Bob finally found his man.  Whether he wanted to or not, it had to be himself.   

In November of ‘72, with his carpet bag and an assortment of tools stowed in the Gutbuster Chevy Carryall, Bob turned the key in the ignition and headed for Mexico.  Knowing that he had to quickly resurrect his fluency in Spanish, Bob tried to read through a couple of Spanish newspapers and magazines that he picked up at a stop in El Paso.  He also worked on his pronunciation by verbalizing Spanish signs along the road as he sped down the highways. Despite the work ahead, he comforted himself in the knowledge that one thing he loved would be in large supply: Mexican food.

Just under 900 miles later, Bob and the Gutbuster arrived in Chihuahua, Mexico where the next mishap occurred.  To begin with, temporary three foot gauge track had to be laid between the engine house where the two locomotives were stored and the nearest standard gauge track with its waiting gondolas, since the narrow gauge railroad’s track had already been pulled up.  This temporary track also had to be laid over top of a 2.5 foot gauge electric mine line in between the two, all of this adding significant time and expense to the job. The next part of the plan was to steam up one of the two engines and use that one to pull the other out of the old engine house and then push it onto one of the standard gauge gondolas after which it would steam itself up and into another one.  As if this was not enough of a challenge, the transfer needed to be done in time to clear the electric mainline before the regular ore train came through. 

After days of work to put down track, the gondolas were finally lined up, and one of the two engines was steamed up to push the other into its gondola before hauling itself into the other.  Before the steaming engine could even pull itself or its partner to the loading site, it ruptured some flues, rendering the loco useless.  More time was lost.  Eventually, they convinced a mine truck driver to pull the two engines out using a cable attached to his dump truck. A diesel locomotive from the nearby smelter then did the work of getting the engines up onto the gondolas.  The work took them to midnight of the final day.  Thankfully, all this, including the removal of the temporary track, was done in time to clear the mainline for the morning’s ore train and the now two-week process was at last complete. Finally, on December 15, the two engines were billed out on the Chihuahua al Pacifico, one off to Golden and the other to Wisconsin.

And this was just the beginning of the difficulties. The next mishap occurred two months later on a very cold February 1973 day in Rhinelander, Wisconsin after the coveted Thunder Lake locomotive arrived.  The logging prodigal, still perched in its gondola, was placed on a spur of the Soo Line Railroad a few hundred feet away from 191’s display spot, but it took close to seven days to make the anticipated switch in the nearly constant snowy weather.  The primary problem was that four decades of sitting out in the open, in addition to the treacherously cold weather during the move, had done a number on 191’s moving parts and her wheels simply would not move. 

As a curious side note, while the workmen attempted to get 191’s wheels moving, a construction worker lit a cigar and tossed the match in the firebox.  Whether he knew it or not, a fair amount of garbage was inside, apparently discarded there regularly by the park’s cleanup crew over the decades.  The lit trash caused light smoke to curl out from the long-dead engine’s stack for several days during the moving process from which some local residents wrongly assumed the engine had been steamed up.

Despite their efforts through the frigid temperatures and blowing snow, nothing seemed to get the engine to roll.  At last, a final decision was made.  The crew greased up the rails and slid her with a winch, wheels locked, onto the lowboy trailer.  After the stubborn engine slowly slid off her 40-year home, she was maneuvered on the trailer around trees, electric poles, and serpentine roadways to reach her waiting gondola. After almost a week’s worth of work, ex-Thunder Lake locomotive No. 5 was at last in her place and No. 191 was moving west by rail towards home.

Part 7

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 5

See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

See Part 4 here.

 Almost an engine: a rotary snowplow

In the meantime, with still no South Park locomotive at the museum, an event came about that sent it a close second, a rotary snowplow.  A steam-powered rotary snowplow is essentially a locomotive that powers blades to attack snow on the track and launches it out of a chute instead of powering drive wheels.  Machines like this were necessary on the many snow plagued lines of the South Park.  

One of the South Park’s two rotaries, No. 99201 was ordered in 1899 in part to clear the legendary amounts of snow over Altman Pass, site of the Alpine Tunnel, on the way to Gunnison, but the railroad found it weighed too much for this section and could not fit through the tunnel.  Instead, it was stationed at Como and used on other parts of the C&S.  The plow was so big, in fact, that its trucks could be switched between narrow and standard gauges and thus the rotary was used at various times on both.  When abandonment finally came to the narrow gauge, the rotary was standard-gauged again and used in Cheyenne, Wyoming and then spent the remainder of its days infrequently plowing the standard gauged Leadville to Climax route, it’s last run being in front of a diesel in 1965, a late date for anything steam-powered in the US.

In October of ‘72, John Terrill, president of the C&S, finally decided to retire rotary 99201 and donate it to the Colorado Railroad Museum.  The donation, however, came with challenges.  The behemoth machine had to be moved, of course, but while the C&S was happy to assist on its lines, it was necessary, due to the isolated C&S Leadville to Climax branch, to coordinate with the less than accommodating Rio Grande to move it from Leadville to the C&S connection in Pueblo.  The D&RGW refused to move the plow with a dismissive comment that it was “unseaworthy.”  Unfortunately for Bob Richardson, this unhelpful spirit exemplified many of his dealings with Rio Grande management.

On the flip side, Bob found the C&S management a very different story, an example of which was the down-to-earth, kind president John Terrill who went to bat to get the rotary to the CRRM.  After hearing of the Rio Grande’s claim that the plow was not safe to move, Terrill gathered several members of the C&S mechanical department and insisted the Rio Grande conduct an inspection of the rotary with his team at the same time.  It seems that, unsurprisingly, once the C&S put on the pressure, the "unseaworthy" plow suddenly found its sea-legs, and the D&RGW agreed to move it, though they made sure to charge $1400 to do so.

After No. 99201’s move over the Rio Grande and then the C&S, she came to rest at the museum, for

many years outside the museum’s gates, behind a former Union Pacific 0-6-0 engine acquired about the same time.  The museum now had an incredibly powerful symbol of the legendary fights that the C&S fought year after year against snow in the Rocky Mountains.

While this victory with C&S rotary 99201 was in hand, the chance to get DSP&P 191 was starting to look a bit out-of-reach.

Part 6

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 4

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 4

See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

 How Would You Like to have a South Park engine?

SUMMER 1972

GOLDEN, COLORADO 

The phone is ringing.  

Bob picks it up.  On the line is Harvey Huston, a historian and author well connected with the Rhinelander Logging Museum in Wisconsin.  Hellos and anything else discussed quickly fade into oblivion when Harvey asks Bob a motion-stopping question.  “How would you like to have a South Park engine?”

*******

This brief question from Harvey Huston requires a great deal of backstory.  Of course Bob would like a South Park engine, and Bob knew which one it was too.  Huston was referring to the old 2-8-0 consolidation logging locomotive at Wisconsin’s Rhinelander Logging Museum.  In his research, Cornelius Hauck had discovered its existence and its curious history, a history, as Hauck and Richardson learned, that took it all the way back to 1880 when it was built for none other than the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad. 

The aged engine, 92 years old at the time of Bob’s phone conversation, started out life as DSP&P 51 and was later renumbered 191, a number she also wore for the intervening Denver, Leadville & Gunnison Railway as well.  When the C&S finally took over, her designated number became C&S 31, though the veteran 2-8-0 likely never got renumbered or used by the C&S, but was sold for $2000 to a Wisconsin logging line before 1902.  

None of this in particular was news to Bob.  M.C. Poor, in his historic 1949 book Denver, South Park & Pacific on the history of the DSP&P, noted these facts, along with the dispositions of all of the South Park’s locomotives, whether scrap dates or sales to other lines, but the trail of this engine evaporated after its sale to the Thunder Lake Lumber Company and Poor simply noted “Dates and details unknown.” Like so many engines with unknown dispositions, it was assumed scrapped at some point.   

This assumption turned out to be false.

Surprisingly, Cornelius Hauck picked up DSP&P 191’s elusive trail.  He discovered that 191 had not been cut up, but instead managed to get saved after, and possibly even due to the fact that, she was just plain worn out.  

After 191 was shipped east by 1902 it worked for a succession of loggers.  She first worked for the Edward Hines Lumber Company in Wisconsin and was run as Washburn & Northwestern #7. In 1905 she was sold to the Robbins Lumber Co. in Rhinelander, which was bought in 1919 by the Thunder Lake Lumber Co. One source said that the cautious owner of this line thought she was too heavy to be used unless the ground was frozen. By 1932, the now 52-year old ex-DSP&P 191/Thunder Lake No. 7 was in such bad shape that, as one historian put it, the engine was “just shy of ceasing forward motion.” The line steamed the DSP&P veteran one final time, and, under its own power, the engine chuffed onto a park display track where it stayed until it was later moved to the Rhinelander Logging Museum. 

The meandering journey of DSP&P 191 and its ultimate salvation was so curious that Jason Midyette, a man intimately involved in rail preservation and restoration, wrote that 191’s "survival was more a result of random chance than any actual plan; had the C&S kept it, it would have been rebuilt and modernized (and ultimately scrapped) and had the locomotive been in better shape, it might not have been set aside for display in 1932." 

In the summer of 1972, after forty years on display, few could have guessed that 191 was on the verge of a completely new journey, one that depended entirely on Bob’s answer to Harvey Huston’s almost humorous question on the phone.  “How would you like to have a South Park Engine?”  One might as well ask, “Would you like a million dollars?”  Of course!

The potential jokester, Harvey Huston, was anything but.  He worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad as an attorney, but trains were much more than his work. He was a true enthusiast who had also caught the narrow gauge bug. Like, Bob, he got it out west, but Harvey’s narrow gauge fever turned him, instead, towards the narrow gauge lines of his own state of Wisconsin. 

Twelve years before his call to Bob, a 1960 article published in The Northern Lakes Advertiser, a Wisconsin-based newspaper, described Huston’s appetite for knowledge this way: “A railroad attorney whose hobby is the collection of information about the old-time narrow gauge lines that served the logging industry has had his steps turned to Rhinelander. What he has learned about the old Thunder Lake Railroad has fascinated him. He has made several trips to Rhinelander already and plans to return, for now he is gathering his material for publication in a book.”

A year later, in the spring, he published the book The Thunder Lake Narrow Gauge. During his years of collecting and research he became very familiar with the Rhinelander Logging Museum that had a Thunder Lake engine on display outside.  News had reached him, however, of a unique chance to get an even more authentic Thunder Lake engine, one that hadn’t meandered its way to the line, like 191, but was built brand-new specifically for it.  

Down in Mexico, the Chihuahua Mineral railroad was shutting down and one of its locomotives was originally Thunder Lake No. 5, built for the logger in 1925.  It was used south of the border from 1941 until 1971, and was now being given away.  When word of this reached the Rhinelander museum, originally through Bob himself, who was often on the lookout for available narrow gauge equipment, the museum and Huston knew it was time to act.  

But there was a problem: Huston and the Wisconsin museum had neither the money nor the expertise to move an old engine 1870 miles from Mexico to the top of the US, especially a locomotive that didn’t match the gauge of any mainline operating railroad in the country.  Not only was this a logistical puzzle, but the Mexican line’s free offer was contingent on the Rhinelander museum paying for the move. Lacking both the expertise or the finances, Huston and the museum decided to turn to Bob and the Colorado Railroad Museum, since they had both expertise and, well, at least more money than the Rhinelander.  

Bob Richardson and Cornelius Hauck must have wondered whether receipt of No. 191 was worth all that Huston asked.  If they agreed, they would need to use the Museum’s expertise and reserves to help orchestrate and finance the move of ex-Thunder Lake loco No. 5 from Mexico to Wisconsin and then the move of 191 cross-country back home to Colorado, jobs that would necessitate numerous volunteers, and surely cost thousands of dollars, coordination with several railroads, and countless hours of planning, not to mention the actual work to conduct the move.   

However, Denver, South Park & Pacific 191 was no small prize.  The 92 year old engine that started out life as DSP&P 51 and was later renumbered 191 had significant historic credentials to its name.  She was the same engine that likely rode and then pulled up the western-most tracks of the South Park Line back in 1889, tracks that at one time had been intended to extend up Ohio Pass, in the same vicinity that Bob Richardson and Billy Gilmer and his brother had tromped around back 1954 in their search for old coke ovens.  If 191 indeed played this role (there were only two engines stationed at Gunnison at the time and 191 was one of them), then this engine went closer to the Pacific than any other Denver, South Park & Pacific engine ever did. 

On top of this, it is the only fully South Park locomotive in existence.  Jason Midyette noted, “No. 191 was much as it was when it left Baldwin [Locomotive Works] 52 years earlier...[A] strong argument could be made that virtually nothing on it was repaired or replaced after it left Colorado.  [All this makes 191] a remarkably original example of an 1880s narrow gauge freight locomotive.” In fact, while several other C&S engines survive, only one other, No. 9, has DSP&P heritage, but this engine was so altered by the railroad over the years that almost nothing remains of the original locomotive.

Finally, one of its most compelling credentials is 191’s age.  If it returned to its home state, the 1880 consolidation would not only be the first South Park engine owned by the Colorado Railroad Museum, but the oldest authentic native Colorado engine in existence.

Despite the well-established value of the acquisition of 191, Huston had one more card up his sleeve to motivate the generosity he so desperately needed to get his own engine: a two-for-one deal. The Mexican line, Harvey explained to Bob on the phone, was offering a second narrow gauge steam locomotive, Potosi & Rio Verde No. 4, for free in addition to the Thunder Lake engine.  Bob would then not only get 191 but another engine to use as CRRM pleased.  The engine had no Colorado heritage and it needed a new firebox and boiler if it would ever operate, but, if nothing else, maybe it could fetch a handsome price from another tourist route and help offset some of the costs of these potential moves.

So Harvey’s question, “How would you like a South Park engine?” finally received an answer.  Bob drew in a breath and said, “Yes.”  

That “Yes” set in motion a long and involved process with more twists and turns than he or Cornelius could have imagined at the time of the phone call.

Every journey begins with a step and one of the first of this twisting path involved locating a person willing to head to Chihuahua, Mexico to supervise the shipping of the two engines there.  Bob, 62 with lots of responsibility at the museum, knew one of the many faithful volunteers would surely jump at the chance to take on this adventure south of the border to rescue two locomotives, so in the summer of 1972, with word out about the need, he waited for that person to surface.

Unfortunately, the waiting dragged on much longer than he expected.

Part 5

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 3

See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

 The Move to Golden; Two C&S Cars Say Goodbye

The Narrow Gauge Museum at Alamosa was growing, but by its 5th anniversary in 1958, this had turned into growing pains.  On the positive side, the museum had acquired more and more equipment.  Bob and his business partner Carl Helfin now had four engines, a Galloping Goose, several freight cars, and two cabooses.  The problem was that they simply ran out of space.  If the museum was to expand, it needed more land.

Accessibility was another issue for the museum, though not for the motel.  When Bob and Carl first came to Colorado in the early ‘40s, the lack of tourist accommodations forced visitors to often sleep in their cars. Seeing this available market, Alamosa was a good spot to build a motel, a new concept at the time, as tourism was growing after the second World War ended, and the town was along Route 285, a highway undergoing slow, but consistent development.

The needs of the museum, however, were different than the motel.  Tourist passersby were not the bread and butter of an historic collection.  The museum needed a spot closer to a larger population.  

These were all practical concerns, but some personal ones added to the impetus to move.

Issues had arisen between Bob and and his motel business partner Carl A. Helfin and the two decided to part ways.  In February of ‘58, Bob graciously chose not to disclose the details and simply wrote in the last copy of his very popular newsletter the Narrow Gauge News that he had “sold his interest in the Narrow Gauge Motel Inc., [and] in the process acquir[ed] the bulk of the museum items.” 

Bob embarked on an enormous undertaking: to relocate his museum.  This was not a job to do alone, and he found a partner for his new venture in another fellow Ohioan by the name of Cornelius Hauck.  Cornelius had visited the Narrow Gauge Museum in Alamosa some years back and pressed Bob to save another D&RGW engine, no. 318, that happened to be up for auction, to which Bob, who had reached a level of exhaustion in saving so much equipment already, quipped, “Why don’t you save it?”   So, that’s just what Cornelius did, later delivering the locomotive to the Alamosa museum for display.

The two now joined forces to relocate the museum and found an ideal site in the town of Golden, once the gateway to the Rockies for the Colorado & Southern narrow gauge on its way up Clear Creek Canyon.  A spot such as Golden, only a dozen miles west of metropolitan Denver, would allow easy access to the museum for many times more people than possible in Alamosa.  Here the Narrow Gauge Museum was reborn as the Colorado Railroad Museum.

The heritage of the South Park narrow gauge was symbolically honored at the new museum’s founding on November 2, 1958 when Bob and then-president of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club Bill Gordon used an abandoned construction crew shovel found along the never-completed Ohio Pass Extension, the grade found by Bob and the Gilmer boys back in ‘54, to turn over the initial shovel of dirt to inaugurate the start of construction for the new museum.

Other remnants of the South Park Line owned by the museum would not be so honored when they had to pay the price, quite literally, for the museum’s needs in Golden.  The purchase of 15 acres of property between North and South Table Mountains, the move of all the equipment over 200 miles north from Alamosa, and the construction costs of the new Golden facilities all demanded sums not in Bob’s or Cornelius’ present pocketbooks.  However, a uniquely timed opportunity arose which provided some desperately needed funds.

At the same time that Bob and Cornelius were struggling to move and build their new museum, another venture was rising from the ground in the town of Golden.  When the now-world-famous Disneyland theme park opened in California in 1955, many claimed it would fail, but it bucked all expectations and became an enormous success, which in turn directly spurred numerous copycat theme parks, the very first of which was being built in the late ‘50s right in Golden at the very same time as the Colorado Railroad Museum’s start. This new park, dubbed Magic Mountain, eagerly sought to mimic Disneyland’s old-time narrow gauge train, and naturally looked to Bob and Cornelius for some rolling stock.  

In 1959, in a heartbreaking but financially prudent move to raise money for the fledgling museum’s new building, the museum sold two of its C&S cars, refrigerator 1116 and boxcar 8308, to Magic Mountain along with RGS engine 42 and RGS caboose 0409 for use as a tourist-hauling park train.

The pocket book was tight and unfortunately these pieces of C&S lore filled the needy coffers.  Still, Bob appreciated that the cars were given a chance to do what they were designed to do: haul cargo on steel rails, albeit human cargo this time.  To do this, though, unlike the RGS engine, the cars lost most of their historic appearance and design in the process of being turned into smaltzy open-air theme park pieces. Much of the two cars’ half-century old character was destroyed as everything but their frames and running gear were ripped out and discarded, only to be replaced by seats and rider car shells. 

To add insult to injury, the future prospects of the two C&S cars quickly deteriorated.  Less than a year after the hopeful grand opening of Magic Mountain, the Disneyland-copycat declared bankruptcy and closed its doors. The park’s train was then put out to pasture as a display at the Magic Mountain site.  

While the loss of the two cars left a hole in the museum’s C&S collection, it was filled with the discovery of a car that played a significant role in the railroad’s history.  In 1961, a year after Magic Mountain’s collapse, Bob located and retrieved C&S caboose 1009.  When the final C&S narrow gauge freight pulled into Leadville for the last time on August 25th, 1943, the car that had the sad honor of bringing up the rear of the train was this caboose.  The tiny bobber, as the diminutive 4-wheeled cabooses were sometimes called, was dismantled in Leadville the following month, meaning that all her metal parts and wheel bases were removed, and the cabin sold to a private owner.  Bill Brown, a CRRM research volunteer, said 1009 found her way to Buena Vista (though Bob noted in his autobiography that the caboose “was retrieved from Leadville”), where she remained until found, in 1961.  Once Bob got her to Golden she was fitted with a new base and wheels to represent the tail end of the C&S like she did for so many years.

News turned hopeful again for C&S reefer 1116 and boxcar 8308 when the Woodmoor Corporation purchased the former Magic Mountain site, including the train, in hopes of reviving the spot somehow.  Initially, in 1969, nearly a decade after their last use, Woodmoor moved the train and displayed it at the corporation’s headquarters in Monument, near Colorado Springs.

The news got better, or worse, depending on one’s perspective in 1971, when the Woodmoor Corp. officially reopened the former Magic Mountain site in a new form as a themed shopping area named Heritage Square.  The good news was that the train was moved back to Golden.  The bad news was that the train was not to run but was instead converted, along with the former Magic Mountain Railroad depot, into a stationary dining area with both C&S 1116 and 8308 having their open rider car sides enclosed to serve as parts of the restaurant. 

Part 4