Adventures on the Narrow Gauge, June '63 to June '64

In the 12-months between June 1963 and June 1964 I made 6 trips to the narrow gauge. This was not because I had lots of time, plenty of money, a working car, good information, and lived nearby. In reality, I had none of these. As a pennyless engineering student living 380 miles from Chama, chasing the narrow gauge was pretty much a pipe dream, so it took some desperate measures to get to see the narrow gauge operations that were then in their final months of around-the-year freight service. I was lucky enough to ride the SILVERTON train in 1959 and 1960 in conjunction with family vacation trips to Colorado.



In 1961 the family summer vacation trip went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, with no narrow gauge connection. In 1962 I spent the summer with a friend and his family in Kearney, Nebraska, taking summer classes and watching the UP Big Blows roar thru town. There was a bit of narrow gauge with WP&Y 69 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Riding The Rio Grande's "Royal Gorge" south from Denver on the way back toward Alamogordo, NM, did lead to serious thinking about how one might make a side trip to Alamosa, but that seemed close to impossible under the circumstances.



By the spring of 1963, my finances and transportation options had not improved, but the narrow gauge's future prospects were definitely dimming, so I decided I couldn't wait any longer. So I proposed to my parents that I should be allowed to drive our 1949 Mercury to Chama, but this request was denied on the grounds that the Mercury was very unreliable and not usable for a thousand mile adventure. Later, the main problem - oil loss caused by a blocked breather filter - was later easily fixed. In the meantime my parents eventually offered a compromise - they would make a vacation trip to Vallecito lake north of Durango and drop me off in Chama, and pick me up later. So I wrote to the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club, and received this favorable reply by Richard Kindig:



So a narrow gauge plan was quickly put together - my parents would drop me off in Chama, I would ride the Rocky Mountain RR Club special from Chama to Alamosa on June 1, spend a day in Alamosa on June 2, and then ride the Illini RR Club special from Alamosa to Durango where my dad would pick me up for the rest of the family vacation at Vallecito lake.

On June 1 we left Alamogordo at the crack of dawn, and we arrived in Chama well before the scheduled arrival of the train from Durango. 484 and 498 were steaming quietly, with 498 scheduled to be the helper for the passenger special. 498 engineer Dunn and hostler Cunningham were waiting outside the oil shed, and I struck up a conversation. Eventually I was bold enough to ask if it might be possible to get a cab ride, knowing that this was really a long shot. Engineer Dunn seemed to be a very friendly type, and he replied that he couldn't do it on a passenger train, but that he might be able to do it on a freight. I took this as an invitation for a cab ride, the holy grail of railfanning, should an actual freight encounter ever materialize.



Shortly, 488 pulled in with the long passenger special from Durango, and 498 coupled on as helper for the 4 percent climb to Cumbres. One of the errors of my ways was not bringing a camera on this trip, wanting to experience my first narrow gauge mainline encounter raw, without looking thru a view finder. But Otto Perry was chasing the double header, and here is one of his photos from the DPL just above the Coxo crossing.



(to be continued)