All Steamed Up in Durango

After a fairly long drive from Arches N.P., we arrived at our motel in Durango CO. It was a Best Western just outside of town and was pretty much the only place that had a room available that night and the next (we knew we would spend all day on the train trip and decided we needed to stay two nights). It was, unfortunately, only marginal as a place to stay. The bed was comfortable, but the room was plain and had a disinfectant smell to it -although it was clean. The worst part was that it was on the second floor with no elevator. Needless to say, at an elevation of 6,000 feet, hauling our luggage up to the room was a "breathtaking" experience. But it wasn't a disaster and we put up with it for two nights. The good news was that the reason for the scarcity of hotel rooms was the fact that we had arrived by pure dumb luck at the peak of the southwest Colorado fall foliage season.

The Best Western Durango

Colorado fall foliage - the aspens were gorgeous

Durango is a pretty cool little town. It was in fact the first real town we came across since leaving Vegas. It's a college town (Fort Lewis College) plus being a center for skiing, hunting, rafting, fishing and other outdoor activities. It has numerous restaurants, bars and interesting shopping areas. And, of course, it has the Durango and Silverton narrow-gauge railroad.

What is a narrow-gauge railroad? Gauge is the distance between the rails. In most railroads, subways, etc. in the U.S. and the rest of the world this is 4 feet 8-1/2 inches - normally called "standard gauge". However, under certain circumstances, such as mountainous terrain, a narrower gauge is used to reduce construction costs. In the case of the D&S it is 3 feet between the rails.

The D&S was originally a branch of a larger system called the Denver and Rio Grande Western (D&RGW). It was built to haul gold and silver out of the mountains to Durango (which started out as a railroad town) and from there onward over the main line. Eventually, the D&RGW abandoned its connection to Durango after the mines played out and the D&S became an independent tourist railroad.

Enough history. We ate in a nice restaurant that night in Durango called the "Red Snapper" and hit the hay. The next morning we were at the depot to board our steam train into the Rockies.

Here comes our train!

Watch out behind you Bob !

The engineer gets his orders for the trip

The Durango and Silverton operates a fleet of narrow-gauge, coal-fired steam locomotives and is one of the few tourist railroads in the U.S. to operate all steam powered trains. Since I'm a steam buff, I was pretty much in heaven.

Our route took us through the outskirts of Durango and up the Animas River gorge, rising a total of 4,000 feet to the old mining town of Silverton. The full name of the Animas is "El Rio de las Animas Perdidas" - the river of lost souls. Sounds spooky, but it supposedly refers to members of an early Spanish expedition who ventured up the river never to be heard from again.

The Animas River Gorge

Another view of the river

As we rounded a sharp curve we got a good view of our locomotive working hard to get us up the steep grade to Silverton.

Some of the steep cliffs which line the gorge. This area was used as a location in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". It was the site where they supposedly jumped off the cliff to escape the posse.

At first, I felt a little guilty about dragging Michelle so far east out of our way to indulge my train fetish. But she later said that the trip up the river into the Rockies with the scenery and foliage was one of the highlights of our trip out west. She also like Durango itself as an interesting town. So I didn't feel quite so bad.

Again on a sharp curve we could see the rest of the train behind us

Looking down into the river gorge - hope the track work is sturdy!

A view up the gorge with some of the Rockies in the background

Finally, after a spectacular 3-1/2 hour train ride, we arrived in the old mining town of Silverton. The railroad tracks are laid right up one of the two main streets in Silverton and end pretty much in the center of town.

Michelle stands at the end of the line in Silverton

The engineer and fireman do an end of the run inspection of the locomotive's running gear. In order to accommodate a large, powerful loco on the 3-foot tracks, the driving wheels are located inside the engine's steel frame while the cranks, counterweights etc. are on the ends of the axles outside the frame.

Silverton is a typical mining town. Like many others (Skagway Alaska comes to mind) it basically existed to separate the miners from their pay. As such, back in the day it was well equipped with saloons, bawdy houses, gambling and anything else a weary miner would buy. Today, it exists to separate the tourist from his money. Which now means bars, restaurants, and t-shirt/souvenir shops. Thanks to the cold weather and my lack of warm clothing, it separated me from enough to buy a souvenir sweat shirt.

Looking south on Silverton's main street. That's the first snow of the winter on top of the mountains in the background.

Looking north on Silverton's main street. It was actually kind of a neat town. We were told that the few people who spend the winter there get around town on cross country skis.

We spent about an hour and a half in Silverton - enough time to wander around and have lunch. When we booked our trip we opted for the train up/bus back tour. We reasoned that the train took the same route back and would not get us to town until fairly late. It was not a bad decision. The bus followed something called the " Million Dollar Highway" back to Durango. The highway was even higher up than the train route and offered some spectacular views of the Rockies.

A Video of the train leaving Silverton

Thus, we arrived back in Durango in plenty of time to buy the obligatory HO scale souvenir model D&S railcar and to have dinner at a pretty good Mexican restaurant.

Another advantage of our "detour to Durango" happened to be that on our way back westward, we were going to pass right by the entrance to the Mesa Verde N.P. We stopped there the next morning and got to see some amazing Native Indian cliff dwellings.

More about that next time.