Durango Car Shop, 1957

Here's an interior shot of the Durango Car Shop taken in 1957. The doors were either missing or always open, and the tumbleweeds blew through here. The door to the right led into a small shed and all the car stencils were stored here.
There was a carman named Swede who worked here and I remember chatting with him one day when he was repairing a pulled truss rod on a drop bottom gon. He said he wasn't supposed to fix the car since the cost would exceed $25 and the Grande had an order out by then to scrap all BO cars that would take more than an air hose, or someting easy and not costly. But Swede said he either fixed the car or sat in the roundhouse, and he kept on working on cars despite company directives.
This is a far cry from the shop the D&S has today. All major repairs in the 50s and 60s were made in Alamosa, and the Grande had a number of car repair tracks, a wood shop, and all that sat next to the main shop building.
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