Real Working Steam
This is it: real rail history, most in living color. See the best in action!
D&RGW Freights: Narrow Gauge in the 1950s and 60s (c)
D&RGW Freights: Narrow Gauge in the 1950s and 60s (c)
This amazing hour-long film documents 1950s and 60s Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge steam hauling freight in the Colorado Rockies. Watch the 400 class engines pulling freight in tandem, sometimes double heading at the front of the train, sometimes with a puller and a pusher mid-train or at the rear.
Experience the D&RGW as a real working railroad. Back then narrow gauge steam brought critical supplies and industry into the Colorado Rockies and northern New Mexico. Long strings of coal and lumber cars roll Eastbound. Farm machinery and new Chevies are delivered atop flat cars. Tank cars groan over the 4% grade up Cumbres Pass on their way to the refineries. Included is a beautiful vignette of the rarely captured Farmington line.
A 1950s oil and gas boom in the Farmington region kept narrow gauge traffic alive hauling oil field pipe to the area. Oil pipe was the commodity that kept the narrow gauge a healthy respectable money earner when many in management wished it would dry up and go away. No tourist line here, but a real railroad, hard at work, photographed by the best: Keith Pregler, Herb Craig, Mac Owen and Glenn Beier. 63 minutes
Cover photos and most above by John B. West