Joe,
I was just at both early last month. Here's a few tips...
Durango & Silverton:
Ride on the
right side of the train out of Durango.
Don't miss the small museum in the roundhouse and look at the one door that goes to the turntable. There is stuff to see there and I got good shots of stuff happening that evening and the following morning.
If you get to Durango the night before, the Silverton trains arrive around 6-ish, so you can get photos of them coming back in and doing switching at the depot.
There's a nice 'hole on the wall' pizza place near the Durango depot on the main drag, which I
really enjoyed: [
fathersdaughterspizza.com]
The same street has a lot of neat shops, if you have the time (though some close early in the day).
If you are planning for dinner there, plan for a long wait at most restaurants. The McDonalds there is right next to the depot if you want something simple.
Silverton has a nice small, quirky, train-related gift shop: [
www.silvertontrainstore.com]
Silverton also has a SP bay window caboose tucked between two buildings, something you can easily miss. There are also a couple of NG boxcars (not owned by the RR)tucked away at various places in Silverton, one was seen as we were going out of town on a bus (our group only went to Silverton, not the return to Durango).
There is an official RR gift shop in Silverton but they apparently don't stock it well and it's often closed.
Cumbres & Toltec
The gift shops at each end have
mostly the same things that I could tell, but Chama's had some stuff the other didn't have.
Make sure you walk around the yard, it's simply amazing at Chama.
The Osier depot 'museum' is well done but very small and a dedicated train fan might not find it very interesting in comparison to what's going on outside.
-Lee
Flickr photo set of my On30 layout