Steam & Excursion > RVM-32: Steam & snow @ Plainview ...

Bruce Black photos, .. looks like a couple more braved the weather.
Info below from Evan Werkema:
David Goss' Journeys to Yesterday describes several Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursions using Cat Balou-ed ex-GW 51 (privately owned by John Birmingham and James Arneill) in 1965 and 1966.  I think this is the April 17, 1966 trip from Denver to the Moffat Tunnel, whose description includes the following:

"The first planned photo stop at Clay was cancelled due to fog and snow.  The second stop at Plainview allowed photographers a little more in their viewfinders than a disembodied headlight.  Roundtrip tickets to the Moffat Tunnel were $10 for adults and $6 for children (no meals included).  More than 250 passengers rode this four-car train with heavyweight coaches." 

The 51's excursions on the Moffat Line were accompanied by a diesel-powered train hauling a water car to replenish the 51 and fight any fires the coal burner touched off.  I doubt right-of-way fires were a problem this day, but four cars and wet rail on a stiff grade were, so the water train doubled as a helper above Plainview, detaching at photo stops.

Grande473 wrote:

> Correct me if I'm wrong but I understand that retired C&S Road Foreman of Engines Mickey Hanson ran the engine to the East Portal and Ed Gerlitts fired.
> The Rio Grande crews wanted nothing to do with the steamer.

The book says Hansen was engineer, but doesn't mention the fireman.  After 1967, Rio Grande evidently wanted nothing to do with excursions, period.  The book says they put the kibosh on narrow gauge excursions between Alamosa and Durango in February 1967 and followed up with a moratorium on standard gauge excursions that September. 

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RARE!
Bob

Very rare, thanks for posting. Besides the narrow gauge excursions, the Rio Grande ran a few excursions on the standard gauge lines with diesels. Thanks again for posting.

Randy in PHX

Posted from iPhone

Wow, I didn't know the 51 ever pulled an excursion on the Rio Grande, let alone up to Moffat Tunnel! Given the railroad banned excursions after 1967, this might have been the final steam excursion on Rio Grande rails before the UP-SP merger 30 years later.

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/24 12:06 by DRGWMark.

Thanks for posting the Great Western Rly 51 excursion on the Denver & Rio Grande Western RR back in 1966.  I've heard brief tales of this excursion but never seen any photos.  Glad Bruce was out with his trusty camera.   I wonder if Everett Rohr was part of the crew-?

• 51 starred in Cat Ballou (1965)
• 51 starred in Indiana Jones and the Winds of Change.
• 51 also starred in the 1992 film "Stay Tuned" as engine #666
• 51 starred in the music video "XXL" from French artist Mylène Farmer in 1995

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/24 13:21 by cozephyr.

Ed Gerlits fired , there was a story that the coal was dirt  or something, on this or  the next trip, so they had problems needed  that diesels help, could barely get pressure on what ever  trip had the bad fuel.  Also read a rio grande picnic special made a hard coupling , knocking over a few people , when rio grande tightened up it's special policy, they still ran for mgmt.

May 2, 1965 was the trip with the bad coal. This was a meet at Leyden. The fire was dropped and cleaned at Crescent. 

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One of these excursions on the Moffat, #51 developed a hot bearing and blocked the line for several hours. I don't know which date this happened. 

1968 i think was last trip for illini club alamosa-durango  wasn't it?

dan Wrote:
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> 1968 i think was last trip for illini club
> alamosa-durango  wasn't it?

The last D&RGW passenger charter west of Alamosa was in October, 1966.

What Earlk said is correct. No excursions were run on the narrow gauge outside the Silverton Branch in 1967-'68, the last two years of freight operations. However, there was one very last passenger train run: a special for the National Park Service (which was thinking about preserving part or all of the San Juan Extension at the time) from Durango to Alamosa (overnighting at Chama) on November 23-24, 1968. The NPS ultimately decided not to purchase anything, and eventually after the NG (minus the Silverton and the dual-gauged track between Alamosa and Antonito) was formally abandoned in 1969, the states of Colorado and New Mexico stepped in and purchased the Antonito-Chama portion of the mainline in 1970.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/24 12:39 by DRGWMark.

the Durango based representative was afraid people would not go to durango if they preserved the whole line.......