Waiting patiently
in Silverton, Colo.
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Waiting patiently |
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Waiting for the 600 or so sight-seeing tourist to return—rushing back when the whistle blows the five-minute warning—to the Rio Grande Gold (bright yellow) cars of the Silverton Train, Ex-D&RGW narrow gauge K-28 #478, photographed on the yard spur at Silverton, Colo.
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The hut mounted behind the coal bunker on the water reservoir of the tender is known, in railroad parlance, as a "dog house." It was used as shelter for the head brakeman while the train was in motion between stops. As his primary duty was to uncouple cars being dropped and make sure picked up cars were safely coupled, in rain and snow, he retreated to the dog house. |
This is a great view of the "doghouse"—which immediately dates the photo to 1962. The trip was my 11th birthday present and I took a lot of black-and-white photographs. I had an interesting experience, and then we moved to Seattle.
The town of Silverton started out as a failed gold strike (from whence it got its present name —"We ain't found any gold but we struck that blasted silver by the hunnerd ton" said an old miner, not intending his words to live in perpetuity).
The town produced silver for 70 years and ended up being a large source of uranium during World War II. Several silver mines still operate in the nearby hills, close enough to hike by hardy train riders not needing gastronomical refreshment during the Silverton stopover.
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As the train departs Silverton for the return to Durango and the really world, a trainman validates the souvenir tickets with his authentic punch. Even though the Silverton is run solely as a tourist attraction, the railroad insisted (and still insists) that all operations follow the rule book, down to the whistles and hand signals passed to the crew. |
Leaving Silverton, the train traverses a wye (a triangle of track which reverses its direction). The wye was once the point of interchange between the D&RGW and the Silverton Railroad, which headed up Mineral Creek to the mines of Red Mountain and Ironton in the north. If the descent to Ouray hadn't been a precipitous, impassable box canyon, the Silverton Railroad might have completed the Narrow-Gauge Circle.
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As the rear cars slowly pass a long-abandoned stock pen, our youthful crew member waits to throw the switch back to the main line. This is the wye (or reversing triangle) on which the train turns for the journey back to Durango. Cattle and sheep once accounted for as much as half the railroads' incomes, walking up ramps from this and other pens into ancient stock cars for the trip to market. |
As it was, Silverton never achieved membership in the Circle, but not for lack of trying. The town became headquarters for three railroads, all of which had airs and aspirations to be world-class.
One, the Silverton, Gladstone, and Northerly, even owned a sleeping car which was sent weekly with the Rio Grande's narrow-gauge train to Alamosa for interchange with the standard-gauge train to Denver—so SG&N could proudly print schedules in its timetable of its "through-trains to New York and Europe." Such was life in the up-and-coming silver communities of the Wild West.
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