493 and a unit train of drill mud 11-21-67 -1

In November 1967 I was in a holding pattern, waiting for word from the Air Force Officers Training School about reporting to Lackland Air Force Base. At the same time my brother Wolf(gang) was getting ready to head from the CU campus in Boulder to Trieste, Italy, for a two year research position at the International Institute for Theoretical Physics as part of his PhD program in High Energy Physics. Actually, the only high energy I could relate to was in the coal fire of a steam locomotive. Anticipating a long separation we agreed to meet in Alamosa for a two day chase of 493 and her Chama bound freight. I had been alerted by Ernie Robart of the pending freight movement scheduled for November 21.

This was a pretty unusual operation, the second freight in a row heading from Alamosa to Chama without a continuing onward movement to Durango. The previous train on November 9 had brought empty flat cars for lumber loading to Chama, where the 493 met 476 headed for shopping in Alamosa, and no train to Durango.

On this chase my brother took at least some of the still pictures, while I focused on 8mm movies, which is why I show up in a couple of photos (I haven't been photo shopped out yet). Just as an experiment I thought I would include a few low-res frames from the movie for a little color, as well as to fill in some gaps.

Here is 493 heading down the 3-rail race track with 17 box cars of drill mud on the seventh-to-last revenue freight from Alamosa



Well, I managed to step into the picture here, one of the very few times that happened.



493 is barreling across the Conejos River bridge



In Antonito 493 took on coal at the Red Devil coal loader



From Antonito we followed the train up the valley to Fergusons trestle





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2019 10:56PM by Olaf Rasmussen.