Nostalgia & History > #498 Switching in Farmington, NM, June 1967

Some view of the D&RGW crew working around Farmington, June 1967

1) #483 on the South leg of the wye--notice the Rio Grande Motorways terminal in the background---Motorways is as gone as the narrow gauge.

2) To steal Lucius Beebe's caption of a similar scene, "Throwing the narrow gauge iron" as the brakeman throws the only remaining stub switch on the railroad.

3) Clubbing down the brakes after spotting some pipe cars. Notice the extra support under the car on the left. Both cars are actually standard gauge cars on narrow gauge trucks.

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the 2nd picture shows a stub switch. This is a surprise since branch was originally std gauge.

There is still a stub switch at Rockwood on the Silverton Branch.

In 1967, the switch on the tail track of the wye at Rockwood was a standard knife switch, the stub switch was installed sometime after 1980.

There were still rails paved over at this spot well into the 1980s. The hospital is out of the picture at the right. The railroad donated some land so that San Juan County would not protest the abandonment of the narrow gauge. My youngest son was born in that hospital.

I'm amazed at how you continue to post such high quality and unusual images Drew. Thanx! While you were doing all of this photography, how did you ever find the time to go trucking?

Con

xtra1188w Wrote:
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> I'm amazed at how you continue to post such high
> quality and unusual images Drew. Thanx! While
> you were doing all of this photography, how did
> you ever find the time to go trucking?
>
> Con

That was the result of spending so many years as a local yokel around the Bay Area, working somewhat regular hours and a company owner who knew EXACTLY why I always carried a camera in my truck with me. It didn't hurt either when we went to four weeks a year vacation in 1983. When I was younger, I didn't think twice about spending every daylight hour of the weekend driving somewhere for photos or driving all night to get somewhere, take photos all day and all night driving back home and then back to work in the morning---DRIVING. As we used to say, I got by with a little help from my friends.

Farmington was interesting, I've got shots of my new 1974 Vette parked between the narrow gauge box
cars in the Farmington yard. Everyone knows the line was pulled up in 1970, right?