#498 in Twilight . . .

. . . Both literally and figuratively.

After I had followed #483 & #484 from Alamosa to Chama on 08/28/68,* Ernie Robart thoughtfully clued me in that #498 was approaching from the west with the last loads of freight shipped from Durango.  A few of these have been posted previously, but the following are all recent high-res scans and rescans of the B&W shots that I was able to catch as the sun was fading.  #498 had less than 24 hours to go before her fire would be dropped for the last time, so it really was Götterdämmerung that evening in Chama.

Fortunately, "Old Scratch" had been retired when I had splurged on a new camera that spring - nothing fancy, just a Pentax H3v with a clip-on light meter (shutter speed & aperture still had to be set manually, but at least the meter was always handy) - so these were exposed better and were much easier to clean up than the ones posted earlier this month that were taken with my dad's old Praktika during 1960-67.

We first spotted the train a few miles out of town, but didn't quite make it to the Continental Divide in time.  #498 had hidden herself pretty well for the fourth one here, but she left the poles in sight for Johnny Coal:


The sun was getting low, but the clouds thinned out and the light actually brightened a little:


The track was in poor shape, so we had no trouble getting ahead of the slowly moving train for two more sets of shots:


IIRC, one of Durango crewmen laid off in order to photograph this last freight.  Is he the fellow in the empty pipe gon?


After the usual mild** chili combo at Kelly's, we caught the three locomotives parked near the engine house:


(Continued on following post.)

- Roosso

  * See [ngdiscussion.net].

** "Mild" to Vera meant only three beers - instead of five - were needed to control the fire . . .    
      (See [ngdiscussion.net] et seq and [ngdiscussion.net] for further information.)



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2017 12:36PM by Russo Loco.