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

Video following the C&S Ry. from telegraph pole to Tunnel Gulch Tank (Part 5)

I have a new video in a series of videos following the less-famous stretch of the right-of-way to the Alpine Tunnel from Pitkin to Woodstock.

Part 5 of this series follows the DSP&P/C&S route from a remaining telegraph pole to the restored Tunnel Gulch Water Tank.  Numerous rock cribbing walls, most of which are still intact over a century after their construction, are pointed out as well.  The upper grade that leads to the west portal of Alpine Tunnel can just now begin to be seen. 

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Kurt Maechner

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 2

See Part 1 here.

FRIDAY, SUMMER 1954 

COLORADO

NORTHWEST OF GUNNISON

With the midsummer sun piercing the windows of the Gutbuster, the trio’s car has left civilization behind and they are now headed northwest of Gunnison.  Bob and the two Gilmer boys have entered coal country, old, disused mine buildings occasionally dotting the barren terrain and mountains rising up on their left, the 12,000 foot South Baldy Mountain towering in the distance. Running a museum since last year has not dampened Bob’s joy of history and he is eager to find the abandoned coke ovens Bill sighted earlier this summer.  They are sure to be somewhere down this road.   

As the Carryall Gutbuster trundles along through the increasingly sparse terrain, a narrow gauge track follows them on their left.  These rails originally belonged to the DSP&P/DL&G/C&S, but operation of this line, known as the Baldwin Branch, was turned over to the Denver & Rio Grande once the C&S closed the Alpine Tunnel in 1910.  Discarding the line through the bore severed the routes to and north of Gunnison from the rest of the C&S.  The Rio Grande absorbed these lines into its own system.  The Baldwin Branch, specifically, remained in operation until three years ago, 1951. 

With the Carryall’s tires grinding more and more over uneven stones, the three keep a lookout for the old ovens Billy hopes to find again.  They run across some ovens north of the ghost town of Baldwin, but Billy is quite sure these aren’t the ones he saw earlier in the summer, so they continue on, attempting unsuccessfully to drive over Kebler Pass.  Unable to make it over Kebler, the group decides to go round about via Crested Butte.  The road now is simply the remains of an old wagon road.  Finally, Bob can go no farther.  Not even the Gutbuster can continue on this road.

However, there is another problem.  Bob cannot find a place to turn around.  Thankfully he spies another road, a steep downward forest road, and decides to take it.  On and on the three travel, but no place works for a turn around.  The Carryall continues to bounce and vibrate when finally Bob notices a small flat spot that comes off the road.  He throws the Carryall into reverse and backs up onto the spot.  He looks to his right to check his surroundings. Oddly enough, outside the passenger window, a stack of cut wood that looks suspiciously like rotting railroad ties greets his eyes. 

The three climb out of the car to take a look and Bob’s suspicions are confirmed.  The flat spot they are on is part of an old roadbed and the wood stack is definitely made up of unused railroad ties.  What were these for?  No railroad, to his knowledge, ever cut through here.

The wheels are spinning in Bob’s head, but to no avail.  What the trio has stumbled upon, though Bob will not figure this out for some time, is the hoped-for Road to El Dorado of the Denver, South Park & Pacific.  Some had heard of a stretch of unfinished grading up Ohio Pass intended to reach Utah, completed in the late 1800s and abandoned before a single tie or rail was set in place, but no one in the burgeoning railfan era had ever found it. 

Bob is desperate to explore what appears to be completed, but now bush-infested railroad grade heading both in front of his truck and behind. To the rear it appears that this old roadbed was constructed on two sides of a gully where a bridge was meant to be built.  Over a half century since a construction crew mysteriously packed up and went home, Creation has busily reclaimed this wilderness disturbance, and Bob cannot see much beyond the small spot and the stack of disintegrating, unused ties.  Curiosity is abuzz, but time is not in his favor.  The Gilmer boys must be in Denver by the end of the weekend and they have many miles to go just to reach a good road, dinner, and an inn for the night.  

After a few more quick looks, Bob reluctantly slides into the driver seat after the boys are in place, and rolls carefully back onto and over the rutted trail they had come on.  With their eyes now in high alert for more rail grade, the group spots bits and pieces along the road, a cut here, some fill there.  At the top of Ohio Pass they catch sight of filled-in grade striking out into what has become a beaver pond.  Despite his disappointment to not have the chance to investigate further, Bob knows he will come back sometime to find out more.  

Bill Gilmer is a bit disappointed never to have found the coke ovens he spotted earlier in the summer, but Bob is exultant to have stumbled upon a piece of construction so mysterious.  For someone who knew so much about the narrow gauge in the area, he had no knowledge of a railroad at this spot.  While the car leaves 10,065 foot Ohio Pass behind, heading north towards Redstone on the twisting road, and the long day doubtlessly leads the two drowsy passengers to quiet observation of the passing sights, Bob’s mind may have circled afresh with thoughts of the fabled South Park Line that had built towards this area.  Was that old grade related to the dreams of the old Denver, South Park & Pacific?

With his eyes on the road ahead, and happy to let his likely now-sleeping young passengers dream away the last few miles of their day’s journey, Bob must turn his mind to more pressing matters: they won’t make their planned dinner time at the Redstone Inn.

*******

Bob and his two companions had indeed stumbled upon the mysterious lost extension of the DSP&P, though he didn’t know it until roughly a year later after a return visit and more research through old railroad documents. The railroad had done significant grading work up Ohio Pass, including a massive rock supporting wall, pushing the line west towards its Pacific namesake, but to a reason lost to history, inexplicably, one day all the work stopped before any rails were ever laid.  Memories of Bob’s adventure in this area north of Gunnison would return to the forefront many years later when he orchestrated his most ambitious C&S/DSP&P acquisition. 

Bob Richardson and the C&Sng

The iconic Denver, South Park & Pacific narrow gauge, later a branch of the Colorado & Southern Railway, was gone too soon to save much, the last major section of which, the line over Boreas Pass, was pulled up in 1938, ten years before Bob and Carl Helfin made their move to the Rocky Mountains.  The final short leg between Leadville and Climax survived until it was standard gauged in 1943, ten years before the Narrow Gauge Museum got its start.  By then scrapping operations had consumed what was not already sold off.  As the Alamosa motel and museum collection grew, it naturally was dominated by relics of other railroads such as the Rio Grande Southern and D&RGW as both narrow gauge routes were, unlike the C&S, still alive in the motel’s early years, though these lines were in their death throes.  

Yet, in a curious twist of fate, a large swath of Colorado & Southern rolling stock had managed to sneak past the scrap yard.  An attorney from Denver by the name of Victor Miller, who rescued the Rio Grande Southern railroad from bankruptcy in 1929, sought to do the same for the South Park Line in 1931 when the C&S sought to get it off their hands. Frustrated in his failed, years-long dealings with the C&S, he filed a lawsuit.  The lengthy saga ended in 1938 with Miller receiving 125 C&S freight cars that he could repaint and use on the RGS to settle the case. Most of these cars would later be sent to Alaska for use on the White Pass & Yukon route, deemed crucial to the WWII war effort, but several cars remained in Colorado.

In June of 1954, just one month prior to his jaunt above Gunnison with the Gilmer boys, Bob was able to rescue a few of these C&S-turned-RGS stragglers.  To boot, he acquired three different types of cars, perfect to reflect the many roles played by a railroad.  These were three of the four freight cars he bought from the RGS dismantler and stuffed with railroad records and hardware.  This, along with what Bob later learned was the discovery of the unfinished South Park Ohio Pass grade, made the summer of ‘54 a very good summer for DSP&P/C&S history.  

The June 1954 rolling stock acquisition included, first of all, C&S 1116, built in 1909.  While turned into an outfit car for work crews by the RGS, it was originally a refrigerator car with roof openings where ice was once inserted to keep the car’s cargo fresh.  The next car was 1910-built C&S 50,000 pound boxcar 8308, also reshaped into a RGS outfit car.  And finally, Bob now had C&S 7064 built in the first year of the twentieth century, a 50,000 pound livestock car, with open gaps for airflow, left with other stock cars on Dallas Divide after abandonment. 

These were the Narrow Gauge Museum’s first C&Sng rolling stock acquisitions.  Still, everyone knows the ideal symbol of a line is a locomotive.  In time Bob and Carl’s Alamosa museum had a RGS loco (no. 42) and a D&RGW one (no. 346), but there simply seemed no chance of getting a DSP&P/C&S engine.  The only three left in Colorado were already claimed by various towns for park displays (No. 60 in Idaho Springs, No. 71 in Central City, and No. 74 in RGS garb in Boulder).  The closest Bob could ever likely come would be the now-standard gauged steam-powered C&S rotary snowplow, essentially a locomotive that drives the blades instead of wheels, up at Leadville, but at the time the C&S was still using it.  Upon these thoughts, Bob would have had to resign himself to the fact that there was nothing to be done.  He would have to memorialize the South Park via the three freight cars and no engine.  

Part 3 

The Railroad Riches of Golden, part 1

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.  

*******

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.

*******

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.” 

*********

* Based on research by Al Pomeroy and the Colorado Railroad Museum, there is evidence that the underframe of what is usually regarded as C&S 8308 is actually C&S 8256 or 8261.  Since most of the literature on the car uses the 8308 number I have kept it in this text.

Part 2

What?! Tracks laid in Central City?

 Um...can you believe this?  Someone laid track in Central City!

I know nothing about it other than Brett Wiebold over on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum happened on it recently and took a photo (the pic below).  

Could this be related to these previous attempts (and this) to rebuild this line (for the third time!).

UPDATE: The group doing the work has a website with the following statement:

The Central City Railroad and Mining Museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Colorado's history through heritage tourism. 

In August 1968, that the Colorado Central Narrow Gauge Railroad first started operations as a tourist line in Central City; we are here to bring this history to life once more. 

​Our founders and board of trustees are dedicated to the preservation and restoration of a historic icon of the Amercian West: the stream powered, narrow gauge railway.

​The CCRRMM is currently rebuilding a the historic Colorado&Central Railroad line and is renovating the historic depot as museum. Based in Central City, Colorado and working in tandem with the City Government, the Gilpin County Historical Society, and other private parties, the CCRRMM has a target date of 2021 to accept visitors. 

Como wye video

 While many are familiar with the turntable outside the roundhouse in Como, not as many are aware of the wye that existed outside of town.  As eastbound trains headed past the Como depot and the hotel, the mainline to Denver split from the line towards Boreas Pass and curved sharply (seemingly parallel, albeit a good distance from the Gunnison main).  Then, close to the present highway, the right-of-way curves again to head across South Park.  It is at this curve that the wye once existed.  It was originally know as the King Wye Branch-a branch leading to the King Coal mine.  

One talked-of plan of the track work in Como is to lay track all the way to the wye, all of which can be done without crossing the highway.

Below is a great video of drone footage following the line from the depot, out to the wye, and a little beyond.