When it goes to the left, the fireman has to look out. When the train goes around a bend to the right, the engineer can see everything. There’s the engineer, who sits on the right and operates everything, and there’s the fireman, who sits on the left when he’s not shoveling coal. We didn’t get to ride up in the locomotive, but we did get to talk to the people who do. We’ve ridden it twice, once as part of a Jeep trip (the San Juan Mountains offer some of the most scenic four-wheeling in the world) and once just because we liked the first time so much. Now the railroad is owned by Al Harper, who earlier had helped put in rail service in Florida.Įngine 480 steams through the fall foilage.Įvery year, from the beginning of May to the end of October, you can step back in history and get a sense of both life in the early West and of the immense power of expanding steam. The rail line runs up the Animas River Canyon, one of the most scenic railroads anywhere, and finishes in the Old West town of Silverton, which still has most of the 19 th century red stone buildings it had back when it was founded. saw the potential for a tourist railroad running original steam engines on the route. It looked like the end of the line until a guy named Charlie Bradshaw Jr. It did this for 100 years until the market for silver suddenly dropped. Originally the line was built to haul silver ore from the mountains. Palmer had put in the Durango-Silverton line. Twelve years later the Denver and Rio Grande railroad had reached Durango. This idea eventually manifested itself on our shores in the Transcontinental Railway in 1869, linking the Old East with the New West. Suddenly you could haul tons and tons of goods and passengers far more efficiently than the old way of piling them into a horse-drawn cart. One hundred or 200 years ago when human beings realized the huge mechanical advantages of expanding steam, combined with the greater efficiency of steel wheels rolling on steel tracks, all of a sudden you had the Industrial Revolution. The DSNGRR is a living, breathing, rail-riding history lesson. (At night they run off cleaner-burning sawdust pellets.) So in the roundhouse in Durango every night, you’ll see heat and steam rising from the engines. A steam engine has to be kept running 24 hours a day. When a diesel is done for the day, you switch it off and park it. You can operate a diesel engine for about one third the cost of a coal-fired steam engine. If you’re running a railroad, diesels make a whole lot more sense. Not long after these engines were made, diesels came along. All six of the working locomotives and most of the rail cars are between 80 and 100 years old, representing the tail end of steam power in America. The Durango and Silverton line is one of the last remaining places in the world where you can see and ride in a real, live steam train. And if one of those engines isn’t enough, they hook two of them together.ĭurango Steam Train in fall colors, which are happening now. The locomotives range in tractive effort from 27,000 pounds in a K27 to 37,000 pounds in a K37 (see how the names work?). The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (DSNGRR) in Colorado runs six live steam engines carrying tourists between Durango and the 19 th Century mining town of Silverton. “It’s really incredible the amount they can pull.” “Steam locomotives are some of the most powerful engines ever made,” said Jamie Ryan, who has worked in many capacities for the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Durango, Colo. It’s basically how many pounds of rail car a steam engine can haul behind it. You think your car, truck or SUV has torque? You think it can pull something? Ha! Your car, truck or SUV doesn’t have torque until you toss out those measly foot pounds you’ve been measuring in and start measuring output in “tractive effort.” Tractive effort is how steam locomotives measure their output.
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