Durango Morning - August 2, 1967

These pics were shot by my dad during our first visit to the Narrow Gauge in early August, 1967. He shot these with one of those new-fangled Instamatic cameras using 126 Kodacolor print film. In April of 1977 I found the negatives and had Kodak make some Kodachrome slides from them. So... these are second generation off the original negatives. The camera was a fixed focus, but had some sort of light metering. I remember the camera. It was actually made out of metal, and was rather heavy. With some photoshop magic, I am rather amazed with what came out. Some are nice, some not so nice.... Enjoy.

In those days, the incoming engines from Silverton rolled down to the south end of the yard, and backed in over the ashpit, past the coal tipple and tied up next to sandhouse. There they spent the night. 473 was train #461 and 478 was on # 463. Before we got to the yard, there had been some shuffling. 478 had been moved over to the ready track so 473 could get to the sandhouse, coal tipple and ashpit.

First, 473 gets a dome load of sand.


Then ahead to fill the tender with coal..


The next stop was the ash pit, where the fire was cleaned and the ashpans dumped. An 8 year old yours truly supervises the hostler to make sure he does his job right.


Now it was back to the turntable so 473 could get spun around to face north (timetable direction West) for her run to Silverton.