Steam & Excursion > Pit Victim

Upon discovering this image of the 485 at Durango taken in September 1940, got curious to see if this K-36 built in 1925 still worked at Durango or had ended up in Chama. Learned at www.rrpicturearchives.net that while assigned to the Monarch Branch in 1954, it drifted into the turntable pit at Salida and was dismantled the following year.
Photo credit Russell Lee and the Library of Congress
Be of good cheer,
—Mac
www.lowellamrine.com

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The only K-36 that doesn't survive:

https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,123405,145403
https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,123405,145406
https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,123405,123487

Woah!  That baby was not going to be rebuilt.  Sad incident.

I've never seen one in the pit damaged as bad as this one.  Not only went into the pit but turned over to boot. Wow!

Must have got a pretty goood run for it, but didn't make it across.

Fascinating looking-backwards shot - Most photos show the front of the locomotive, but this angle adds an entirely different feeling.
Bob

When the 485 went off the side of the turntable, it landed on its right cylinder, breaking the casting around the valve chamber.  In 1954, the D&RGW, under Al Perlman, was not about in invest $$$ in having a new saddle half cast for an engine to be run on a railroad they really wanted very badly to see abandoned.