The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 9: Last Train

 See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

See Part 4 here.

See Part 5 here.

See Part 6 here.

See Part 7 here.

See Part 8 here.

Last Train

FEBRUARY 24, 2007

    “There is an unconfirmed report that Robert W. Richardson, 96, has died this morning...With his passing, the narrow gauge fans of the world have lost one of their best.” With the last few clicks of his computer keyboard, Steve Walden, host of the Colorado Railroads blog, grabs his mouse and navigates to the “Post” button.   

    Walden got this news earlier from the widely used online Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum.  Such web sources are easy to find nowadays.  Essentially, though, they are the distant descendants of Bob Richardson’s Narrow Gauge News (later called the Iron Horse News), written in a time when few outside of remote western towns had access to the goings-on of the slim gauge in Colorado. 

    The news about Bob Richardson is later confirmed: The man who helped people around the world discover and rescue remains of the Colorado narrow gauge, had indeed died this morning in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania where he went to live with his family after retiring as executive director of the Colorado Railroad Museum sixteen years earlier in 1991.

Bob had been dealing with some intermittent illnesses in the past few years, but by and large, he had lived a long, healthy life and had still been full of humor and his noteworthy memory to the end.  

As the news about Bob’s passing spread, words honoring his legacy travelled far.  Commemoration of his life reached beyond railfan circles with articles chronicling his remarkable life even in major newspapers like The Denver Post.  Ron Hill of the Colorado Railroad Museum, in his reflection on Richardson’s life wrote, “It is no exaggeration to say that he did more than any other person to preserve Colorado’s unique railroad heritage.” 

Less than a year before his passing in the summer of 2006, Bob Richardson took one more trip to “his old stomping grounds” in Colorado to attend a special event named Railfest in Durango.  At 96, he planned to drive himself nearly 2000 miles from Pennsylvania to his former adopted home state, but one friend, Gordon Chappell, thankfully convinced him to take Amtrak to Denver, where Chappell met and drove him to various spots.  

Bob made many stops besides Durango, including a visit to the Georgetown Loop on September 3rd to ride behind the short-lived resuscitation of Colorado & Southern 2-6-0 mogul No. 9.  But little can compare to his stop in Golden where he visited the museum he birthed first with Carl Helfin in Alamosa in 1953 and then reincarnated along with Cornelius Hauck in Golden in 1959.  On the day of what would be his final steps in the Colorado Railroad Museum’s rail yard, likely marveling at the growth of the once-small museum, he was greeted by so many old railroad friends of the Colorado & Southern narrow gauge that he had a hand in saving including C&S stock car 7064, giant C&S rotary snowplow 99201, diminutive C&S caboose 1009, C&S boxcar 8308’s frame and wheel sets, and lastly the crown of South Park locomotive memories, the venerable 1880 consolidation Denver, South Park & Pacific 191.   

South Park Trivia from CRRM

 The Colorado Railroad Museum put out the following trivia question.  If you know the Alpine Tunnel area you'll likely know the answer!

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 8

See Part 1 here.

See Part 2 here.

See Part 3 here.

See Part 4 here.

See Part 5 here.

See Part 6 here.

See Part 7 here.

The remains of a prodigal come home

    This final story recounts the surprising outcomes of the two C&S cars that Bob Richardson acquired but sold to the ill-fated Magic Mountain resort, boxcar 8308 and refrigerator car 1116.  

1116 at GLRR in 1992

While all that remained of their original forms, due to time spent at the now defunct Magic Mountain park, was their frames and wheel sets with rider cars built on top, the two eventually found use again in this condition.  In the early 1990s, around the time Bob retired and moved to Pennsylvania, Heritage Square, the themed mall successor of Magic Mountain, finally removed the cars from the restaurant where they had served in a stationary position and sold them to the Georgetown Loop Railroad, the tourist line built on the old C&S grade, where longtime operator Lindsey Ashby planned to convert 1116 and 8308 again into active rider cars, named “Grays Peak” (No. 15) and “Torreys Peak” (unnumbered) respectively, and return them to home C&S rails where they were to haul tourists on the reconstructed Georgetown Loop line.  C&S 1116, indeed, experienced this transformation and once again was back in revenue service, while C&S 8308’s restoration was never completed.  However, for boxcar 8308 its story didn’t end there.

Roughly a decade later, in 2004, two events occurred which brought the final complete set of narrow gauge C&S equipment to the Colorado Railroad Museum before Bob’s passing. 

The first event involved two other boxcar remains.  The Great Western Railway, with facilities in Loveland, Colorado, had long ago purchased some dismantled boxcars to use as sheds.  One of these sheds was made up of two narrow gauge C&S boxcars, 8310 and 8301, minus their frames and wheels.  After decades of use, the Great Western was poised to demolish them, but railfan, historian, and engineer Jason Midyette offered to move them himself.  Considering it would cost the railroad nothing, they took him up on the offer.  Midyette kept one, the 8301 which was only a half-car, and moved it for restoration and use as a shed on his personal property, while he donated the full-sized 8310 car body to the Colorado Railroad Museum. The Golden museum now had a C&S narrow gauge boxcar, though with no frame or wheels.  

The second event that completed CRRM’s C&Sng collection occurred the same year when several miles west on Clear Creek, Lindsey Ashby, operator of the Georgetown Loop, parted ways with History Colorado (formerly The Colorado Historical Society), owners of the line, and needed to move all his rolling stock.  Since he owned all the equipment, but no longer had narrow gauge track to run it, he sent much of it to Golden, including C&S boxcar-turned rider car 8308.*  In a full circle, C&S 8308 had started it’s post-revenue life at Alamosa’s Narrow Gauge Museum with Bob Richardson, then moved to Golden’s Magic Mountain Resort where it was converted to a rider car and then a stationary restaurant piece.  Finally, 45 years after Bob let her go, after a stint back in service on the Georgetown Loop, C&S boxcar 8308 came back to the Colorado Railroad Museum. 

C&S 8308’s story continues as its bottom half looks to be a perfect fit for 8310’s upper half.  Volunteers at the Museum removed 8308’s added rider shell and have placed 8310's body on top of it.  When restoration is complete, the Golden museum will at last have a fully Colorado & Southern narrow gauge boxcar.

* C&S 1116, which had been numbered 15 at its first time on the Loop, was renumbered to its original 1116 when it returned there.  Later, it was also re-given the Grey's Peak name. 

Part 9