Americas Great Loop

A photo essay!
The next day (28th), I take a drive around historic Durango and spend an hour at the D&SNGRR museum, which is in a separate portion of the railroad roundhouse (workshop), before heading out on US-160 to Pagosa Springs, then US-84 down to Chama [CHAH-ma], New Mexico.

Chama is a small village, a bit unprepossessing to look at, but they do host the annual wintertime SnoBall Balloon Rally (in which hot air balloon pilots fly each morning over the Chama Valley’s picturesque snow-covered mountains) and I’m two days too early for the annual Chama Valley Art festival and Studio Tour. The village is situated at the southern end of the Cumbres [say Kewm-briz] & Toltec Scenic Railroad, and truly 'scenic' the railroad is. Chama is also the locomotive servicing and maintenance location, where the two remaining stalls of an original roundhouse are still used as a workshop where full locomotive restorations can be and are carried out. The passenger car and rollingstock workshop is located separately at Antonita at the northern end of the railroad.

I check into the historic old but recently refurbished Iron Rails Hotel, directly across from the passenger depot, for two nights. Tomorrow, I’ll travel on the 10:00 am departure on America’s longest and highest narrow-gauge railway, the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR for the 64-mile run across Cumbres Pass to Antonito, arriving there at 4:55 pm after a 1-hr stop at Osier [OH-szher] for a superb buffet lunch. Arriving at Antonito, passengers board a road coach for the 1-hr run back to Chama, for a wonderful day out of just over 8 hrs.

Once again, I’ve booked the Parlor Car and once again it’s the last car on the train and we have our own car host, bar service, and restroom. Happily, the drop-down windows on this car open further than those on the D&S, so photo-taking is a bit easier. I go across to the depot to watch an empty train depart for Antonito… either they’re dead-heading an empty consist to Antonita for a southbound service tomorrow or no-one has booked this trip (apparently, the C&TSRR is concerned about a recent drop-off in bookings). There’s a lot of theatrical whistle-signaling as they marshal the train and complete a brake test.

As with the Durango & Silverton, the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad was originally constructed as part of the Rio Grande’s narrow-gauge San Juan Extension, which served the silver mining district of the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado. Like other Rio Grande RR mineral lines at the time, it was built to a 3-ft gauge instead of the more common 4 ft 8½ inches that was standard within the United States. Freight-wise, the railroad hauled ore, timber, cattle, and sheep. Passenger-wise, it also carried travellers to and from the region on a daily passenger train that included a First-Class Parlor Car but which operation ended in 1951.

However, when subsequent Federal government action (look up “1893 repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act 1890”, if you’re interested) had a devastating effect on the silver mining industry, traffic over the San Juan Extension failed to warrant conversion to standard-gauge. In the decades that followed, the railroad was mostly stagnant; its last major upgrades in equipment and infrastructure having happened in the 1920s. A post-World War II natural gas boom brought a brief period of prosperity to the line, but operations dwindled in the 1960s. Finally, in 1969 the Interstate Commerce Commission granted the Rio Grande’s request to abandon its remaining narrow-gauge main line trackage, thereby ending the last use of steam locomotives in general freight service in the United States.

Most of the abandoned track was dismantled soon after the ICC’s decision, but through the combined efforts of an energetic and resourceful group of railway preservationists and local civic interests, the most scenic portion of the line was saved. In 1970, the states of Colorado and New Mexico jointly purchased the track and line-side structures from Antonito to Chama (including 9 steam locomotives, over 130 freight and work cars, and the Chama yard and maintenance facility), and the C&TSRR began hauling tourists the following year under the management of the non-profit Friends of the C&TSRR Inc. As with the D&S RR previously ridden on and discussed, the K-class engines are all outside-frame 2-8-2 "Mikado" types built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works specifically for this narrow-gauge service.

Soon, it’s time to join my train, and I climb aboard the Parlor Car to meet my 3 table companions. My car host greets me with, “You’ll be sitting with a pretty crazy family group”. I have no alternative but to assure her, “Good… I expect I’ll fit in perfectly” (and so it transpires). We whistle out of the depot and within a mile are onto the unrelenting 4% grade (or 1-in-25; for each 25 feet we move ahead, we ascend 1 foot) that will take us, with very little respite, up to the Cumbres Pass. The mileposts we see on the righthand side of the track relate to the original railroad mileage measured from Denver. Four miles after departing Chama, we cross the Lobato trestle (more a bridge than a ‘trestle’), the second highest on the line, 100 ft above the creek. We continue winding up the valley of Wolf Creek at 15 to 17 mph and 9 miles later we pull into the siding and station of Cumbres, the highest point on the line at 10,015 ft. Close-by, Hwy 17 summits the actual Cumbres Pass at 10,022 ft and shortly later, La Manga Pass at 10,230 ft before it too descends to Antonito. The little railway settlement of Cumbres had historically been populated by a few families who would have enjoyed their summers but would have battled through fierce winter storms and 20-ft snowdrifts, as the men battled to keep the line open.

From Cumbres the railroad continues on more accommodating grades to Cascade Trestle (another modernised bridge), the railroad’s highest bridge—137 ft above Cascade Creek—and down to Osier, where the train pauses for an hour as we all troop into a warm and comfortable dining hall for an excellent buffet lunch; 3 courses if you want them. While we’re here, the opposing train from Antonito comes up and also pauses in the yard for its passengers. For a hectic hour or so, the dining hall is very busy as are the wonderful locals who run it for the C&TSRR. Within our scheduled hour here, we’ve spare time to walk around and inspect this little railroad locality. The hamlet once sported a store, traveller’s rooming house, railroad employee’s section house, passenger depot, cattle yards, coal loading dock, and a covered locomotive turntable. Apart from the rooming house and the covered turntable, these structures have been maintained as museums and are available to inspect.

We depart Osier and run on a helpful grade above the Rio De Los Pinos to the ‘Rock Tunnel’ (blasted through 360 ft of solid rock and unlined), where we negotiate the Toltec Gorge by running along a ledge 600 ft above the river and 800 ft from the opposite rim. Our car host explains that ‘toltec’ is the Spanish word for gorge, and she is surprised—because she apparently hadn’t thought about it before—that this means the place is really named as ‘gorge gorge’. Great hilarity… and I resist the overwhelming temptation to use the word ‘tautology’. We continue up another long valley and around its head to return to where we were (but on the valley’s opposite side) and negotiate the ‘Mud Tunnel’, which IS lined (with timber battens) and past Toltec Siding.

Now the line is mostly descending, and the heavy work for the trusty K-class locomotive is over. Soon, we’re winding down through the double-reverse ‘Whiplash Curve’ and Lava Loop (otherwise known as Big Horn Siding), where D&RGW snow ploughs were once stabled during winter, then down a steep scarp into a wide desert valley along which we make the final descent along a lengthy stretch of tangent track to our destination, the town of Antonito. C&TSRR passengers who might make this trip in the southbound direction will come up from Antonito through this desolate area and have no idea of the magnificent alpine scenery awaiting them.

We arrive into the Antonito passenger depot by scribing a wide looping arc, past the car depot where rollingstock is maintained and new passenger cars built, that places the train at the station on a southerly heading for its departure tomorrow. The road coach awaits, and within an hour delivers us back over the mountain to Chama.

A fantastic day out on a fantastic narrow-gauge steam railway. It has to be the best such product in the world. New Zealand has the Taieri Gorge Limited that has realistic similarities to the C&TSRR (and a few advantages the C&TSRR doesn’t have, including proximity to a major city and airport, and being able to uplift passengers directly off a cruise ship and return them there). Will the civic interests of Otago, and the nation’s government, ever comprehend what a unique, world-class asset they have?Read more