The Swan Songs of Central City - Part 6

The Swan Songs of Central City

-Part 6

by Kurt Maechner

Here is Part 1

Here is Part 2

Here is Part 3

Here is Part 4 

Here is Part 5

Hope for the CCNG

While crews now worked back and forth on the two lines, the railroad still hoped to expand the Central City Narrow Gauge to Black Hawk.  This required a means to surmount a figurative and literal chasm: at the present end-of-track, the long-gone 39-foot-tall, 132-foot-long Mountain City trestle over Packard Gulch would need to be rebuilt.  Sadly, but wisely, they reached the conclusion that the expense of this structure was out of the question.

Innovative as always, the partners came up with an alternative: build track around the trestle site by using a sharp curve cut into the gulch and back to the roadbed on the other side.  This brilliant idea solved one problem but created another.  The curve required to accomplish this feat would be too sharp for a conventional steam engine like No. 40.  The answer was to find a Shay engine.  These uniquely-designed geared locomotives, mainly built for logging lines with steep grades and sharp curves, would easily handle the proposed design.  With this obstacle surmounted, the Central City Narrow Gauge track had the potential to be built at last towards Black Hawk. 

Rocky Mtn. Rail Report - May 1974

The CCNG, in time, got to work grading the Mountain City Trestle work-around and also purchased former West Side Lumber Company Shay engine No. 14 from the defunct California tourist route, Camino, Cable & Northern.  

Shay No. 14, Aug. 1974 Jeff Terry Collection

    With the Shay’s arrival on April 27, 1974, it became the work horse in Central City while No. 40 was put to rest.  No. 40 later followed her sister IRCA engine to Silver Plume in 1978. John Bush, who worked as an engineer at the CCNG, rode in the cab of No. 40 on the truck ride over to the Loop.  Bush, who would later become the president of Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, was the last man to ride in a locomotive cab through lower Clear Creek Canyon when the engine was hauled on Colorado 119 and US 6, which closely parallels the abandoned roadbed of the C&S narrow gauge, from Black Hawk to the division point of Forks Creek and on up through Idaho Springs to Silver Plume.

The Closing Chapter

The move of No. 40 was an ominous omen of things to come.  While hopes were high for the Loop, hope for the future of the CCNG faded.  Yes, some of the grading for the line’s extension was started, and Shay No. 14 had the capabilities to run on it someday, but more track was never laid and the half-mile Central City Narrow Gauge Railroad, whose ridership was dwindling, remained its short, non-lucrative self for the remainder of its life.  

This life ended in 1981, an unlucky 13 years after its resurrection in 1968, when the tracks once again went silent and were then carted off, leaving a twice-abandoned grade with nothing but dirt.  Lindsey, Rosa, and their partners, having managed the two railroads since 1973, believed it was time to shut down the Central City line.  The dream that it could become profitable had long since died, and the way out pointed instead towards the growing Georgetown Loop.  As a closing chapter in the CCNG’s life, Shay No. 14, once the path to the line’s future, was carted off to Silver Plume in 1982. 

Aug. 1980 Bud Bulgrin photo-Jeff Terry collection

The Great Train Robbery

When the Ashbys took up the Central City rails after 1981, the second time track was pulled in the city’s history, C&S 71 sat alone with her two cars again, but she had not been forgotten.  Forty-five years had passed since 71 had been placed on display, and the railroad that originally donated her and also, if the rumors were true, threatened those who sought to run her again, was finally gone.  On December 31st of that year, the Colorado & Southern Railway was absorbed completely into the Burlington Northern Railroad.  Five years later, the Colorado Historical Society felt the time had come at last to bring No. 71 back to life, though not in its home town.  Their eyes were set on giving the engine a future on the CHS’ endeavor at the Georgetown Loop.

On a cold winter morning in 1986, a crew loaded No. 71 minus her tender onto a flatbed truck and hauled her through the canyon near the track she had lumbered along so many times in her past.  Later that day, she reached Silver Plume for the first time since her operating days nearly half a century ago.  Could it be that the newly reconstructed Loop bridge would have an authentic C&S locomotive run over her once again?  The excitement was palpable.

But others were not so happy.  While Central City had never become another Williamsburg, as some 1940s visionaries hoped, it still worked to attract day-trip tourists from Denver.  Georgetown was her biggest rival, and it appeared that it had just stolen one of Central’s historical attractions.  The kerfuffle hit the news, and hit it hard.  One particular later news piece called it “The Great Train Robbery.”  

Westword article

But what could the residents of Central City do?  They had an idea and put it in action.  When the crew returned to haul 71’s tender away, they were met with a big surprise: Residents had physically blocked the road out of town.  These mobilized citizens and the accompanying news publicity helped the town’s massive effort to take back No. 71.  The Gilpin County Historical Society formed a fund to buy back the train, fanned into flame by a notable donation from a businessman by the name of Glynn Alegre. 

Amidst all the negative publicity, the CHS reluctantly let go of their plans for 71 in order to honor the residents of Central City.  Old 71 was brought back as far as Black Hawk after the Gilpin County Historical Society laid down $25,000 to pay for her return. 

LATE WINTER WEEKEND 1987
BLACK HAWK, COLORADO

Truck driver Steve Clifford drives a truck for a living, but his affections are reserved for trains.  Growing up in Grant, along the abandoned South Park Line’s roadbed in Platte Canyon, he developed a close affinity specifically for the C&S narrow gauge.

Today, he decided, was a day for an enjoyable ride into the mountains via Clear Creek Canyon with a train in mind.  He plans to check on old 71 and her gondola and combine.  The display train went through quite a hoopla last year with the failed attempt to take the engine over to the Georgetown Loop, but she’s back.  Well, not exactly.  They have her down in Black Hawk.  It’s not quite her real home in Central City, but close enough.

As he pulls up to the train’s new display spot next to old Victorian homes nestled in the rock and pine-infused mountainside, Steve expects to see a lonely historical artifact standing sentinel, like she did for all those years up the hill in Central.  

What he finds, however, gives him a start.  This engine, for over four decades steam-less, and in many cases ignored, is oddly the center of a mysterious flurry of activity.

Surrounding the locomotive and tender is a precariously constructed housing with people abuzz all around it.  Clifford, an inquisitive man by nature, simply has to find out what is going on.  He parks, gets out, and approaches the activity to find an explanation for the scene before him. 

Steve addresses one of the men at work who explains that they are starting a new tourist route to be built on the same spot that the Central City Narrow Gauge ran, but this time the motive power is not to be foreign steam but the very locomotive the city fought to get in 1940 and 1941 and fought again to keep in 1986, Colorado & Southern 2-8-0 No. 71.

Then, something passes in their conversation that catches Steve’s fancy.  Naturally, the gentleman mentions the need to move the train from Black Hawk back up to its old display spot off of Spring Street in Central City where the new tourist pike will board passengers.  At this moment, Steve’s mind begins to race as he formulates a way he can offer his trucking services, using his 1975 Peterbilt truck, to haul the train up the hill.

Steve Clifford’s potentially providential meeting with those working to resurrect engine 71 led to an acceptance of what he termed the “big haul,” his offer to move the entire train uphill to its old display spot that will soon no longer host a few spectators, but hundreds of passengers.