Steam & Excursion > D&S vs Mother Nature

Monsoon Season has hit Western Colorado with a vengence. Copious rain in many areas that had I70 partly closed near Eagle, Colorado, very wet dirt road East of Alamosa, and lastly, the D&S shut down North of Cascade by a mud slide that stopped trains today (Sunday) and may prevent them again tomorrow (Monday). The first train of the day was on the road before the slide was discovered and likely turned at Cascade Wye. They did run a Cascade train departing Durango at 1100 with the 478 and 9 cars. At least it had the K-28! Silverton hurts when the trains don't come and today was no exception, although there were a lot of tourists in town, many maybe having driven up instead of taking the train. Highway 550 was very busy.

Nice to see C&TS 463 in the shops at Antonito, hopefully getting close to running once again.

The SL&RG train looked nice behind the Mogul. Some 200 passengers on Saturday. Fridays trip behind F40 456 had a side dump car of concrete rip-rap which was dumped just East of Sierra siding. Train still made good time and I must admit that line is fascinating!

KK

For further information, check out today's Durango Herald at www.durangoherald.com. I noticed that all the trains have run so far today (Monday) and seem to have good loads. The Herald reports that the slide is fifty feet DEEP. The problem with mud slides is that once the ground is saturated that they just continue to slide until it either drys out or there is nothing left to slide. What is needed is a dry spell but the storms have been intense the last few evenings and today's forecast is a 40% chance of thunderstorms.